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THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  BIBLE 
ON  CIVILISATION 


THE 

INFLUENCE  OF  THE  BIBLE 
ON  CIVILISATION 


BY 

ERNST   VON   DOBSCHUTZ 
it 

PBOFESSOB    OF    THE    NEW    TESTAMENT    IN    THE    tJNIVEKSITY    OF 
HALLE-WITTENBERG 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
1914 


Copyright,  1914 
BY  CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

Published  April,  1914 


MCJUtY 


TEPHEMg 


PREFACE 

ONE  of  the  greatest  questions  of  our  day  is  how 
modern  civilisation  and  Christianity  can  go  on  in 
harmony.  One  can  approach  this  question  by  sev- 
eral ways,  but  historical  investigation  has  always 
proved  to  be  the  surest.  The  author  has  in  mind 
to  write  in  German  a  full  "History  of  the  Bible," 
when  time  will  allow.  Meanwhile  this  brief  sketch 
may  prove  useful.  Readers  who  look  for  references 
will  find  most  of  them  in  an  article  contributed  by 
the  present  writer  to  Dr.  J.  Hastings's  Encyclo- 
paedia of  Religion  and  Ethics,  vol.  II,  on  "The 
Bible  in  the  Christian  Church." 

The  author  wishes  to  express  his  thanks  to  his 
friend,  Professor  J.  H.  Ropes,  for  kindly  reading 
the  proofs  for  him,  to  Mr.  W.  J.  Wilson  and  Mr. 
H.  A.  Sherman,  who  helped  him  in  improving  the 
diction,  and  to  Professor  Williston  Walker  for 


•«.  - 


vi  PREFACE 

valuable  information  regarding  early  American  doc- 
uments. If  any  reader  should  find  fault  with  the 
English  style  of  this  book,  he  must  not  blame  any 
translator — the  author  himself  is  responsible. 

ERNST  VON  DOBSCHUTZ. 
CAMBRIDGE,  MASS. 
January,  1914. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTEB  PAGE 

I.    THE  BIBLE  MAKES  ITSELF  INDISPENSABLE  FOR 

THE  CHURCH  (TO  325  A.  D.) 3 

II.    THE  BIBLE  BEGINS  TO  RULE  THE  CHRISTIAN 

EMPIRE  (325-600  A.  D.) 28 

III.  THE   BIBLE  TEACHES  THE  GERMAN  NATIONS 

(500-800  A.  D.) 47 

IV.  THE  BIBLE  BECOMES  ONE  BASIS  OF  MEDIAEVAL 

CIVILISATION  (800-1150  A.  D.)     67 

V.    THE   BIBLE    STIRS   NON-CONFORMIST   MOVE- 
MENTS (1150-1450) 94 

VI.    THE  BIBLE  TRAINS  PRINTERS  AND  TRANSLATORS 

(1450-1611) 117 

VII.    THE  BIBLE  RULES  DAILY  LIFE  (1550-1850)  .     138 

VIII.    THE  BIBLE  BECOMES  ONCE  MORE  THE  BOOK 

OF  DEVOTION  .  164 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

TO  FACE 
PLATE                                                                                                                                               PAGE 

I.  HARVARD  PAPYRUS.    ROMANS  1:1-7....  14 

II.  ORIGEN'S  HEXAPIA 16 

III.  CODEX  SINAITICUS 28 

IV.  ROLL  AND  BOOK 30 

V.  VIENNA  GENESIS 32 

VI.  JOSHUA  ROLL     38 

VII.  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER  ON  A  POTSHERD      ...  46 

VIII.  GOTHIC  BIBLE 50 

IX.  ALCUIN'S  BIBLE 52 

X.  THEODULF'S  BIBLE 54 

XI.  LlNDISFARNE  GOSPELS 66 

XII.  BYZANTINE  MINIATURE 70 

XIII.  ENGLISH  MINIATURE 82 

XIV.  WYCLIFFE'S  BIBLE     116 

XV.  GUTENBERG'S  FIRST  PRINTED  BIBLE     ....  122 

XVI.  FIRST  PRINTED  GERMAN  BIBLE  126 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  BIBLE 
ON  CIVILISATION 


THE   INFLUENCE   OF  THE 
BIBLE  ON  CIVILISATION 


THE  BIBLE  MAKES  ITSELF  INDISPENSABLE 
FOR  THE  CHURCH  (UNTIL  325  A.  D.) 

THERE  is  a  small  book;  one  can  put  it  in  one's 
pocket,  and  yet  all  the  libraries  of  America,  numer- 
ous as  they  are,  would  hardly  be  large  enough  to 
hold  all  the  books  which  have  been  inspired  by  this 
one  little  volume.  The  reader  will  know  what  I  am 
speaking  of;  it  is  the  Bible,  as  we  are  used  to  call 
it — the  Book,  the  book  of  mankind,  as  it  has  prop- 
erly been  called.  It  has  been  commented  upon, 
treated  in  every  way,  but,  curious  to  say,  hardly 
any  one  has  attempted  to  trace  its  history  through 
the  centuries  and  mark  the  influence  which  it  ex- 
erted upon  our  civilisation. 

In  order  to  do  this  we  follow  the  traces  of  the 
Bible  through  the  different  periods  of  human  or, 
to  speak  more  accurately,  of  Christian  civilisation. 
In  the  first  period  of  Christian  history,  the  time  of 

3 


1  THE  BiftLE  AND  CIVILISATION 


persecutions  during  the  first  three  centuries  of  our 
era,  there  is  not  much  to  say  about  the  Bible  as 
influencing  civilisation.  Christianity  was  but  start- 
ing on  its  way  and  fighting  for  its  place  in  the  world. 
The  Bible  could  not  exert  a  civilising  influence  upon 
a  hostile  world.  But  by  impressing  its  value  upon 
the  Christian  mind  it  made  itself  indispensable  for 
the  church  and  thereby  laid  the  foundation  for  the 
future  development. 

Christianity  was  a  living  religion.  The  first  con- 
gregations were  dwelling  in  an  atmosphere  of  enthu- 
siasm. There  was  a  general  outpouring  of  the  Holy 
Spirit.  The  prophet's  words  seemed  to  be  fulfilled: 
"They  shall  teach  no  more  every  man  his  neigh- 
bour and  every  man  his  brother,  saying:  know  the 
Lord;  for  they  shall  all  know  me."  Christianity 
was  not  a  religion  of  a  sacred  book,  whose  dead  let- 
ter was  to  be  artificially  kept  alive  by  learned  men. 
It  was  a  religion  of  living  experiences.  Neverthe- 
less, Christianity  from  the  beginning  had  a  sacred 
book.  Jesus  and  his  disciples  used  the  Bible  of 
their  people,  the  Old  Testament,  and  Saint  Paul 
carried  it  to  the  Christian  communities  of  gentile 
origin,  which  had  not  known  of  it  before. 

Christianity  could  not  do  without  it.  If  it  was 
necessary  to  convince  Jews  that  Jesus  was  the 
Messiah,  how  could  this  be  done  without  arguing 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  5 

from  the  Scriptures  as  proof?  If  the  gospel  was  to 
be  announced  to  the  heathen  they  would  give  less 
heed  to  the  new  tidings  than  to  the  statement  that 
it  was  really  the  most  ancient  form  of  religion  as 
attested  by  this  sacred  book,  which  was  superior  to 
all  the  books  of  poets  and  philosophers  and  legisla- 
tors by  reason  of  its  venerable  age.  Christianity 
without  any  hesitation  claimed  the  Old  Testament 
as  its  own  book,  its  own  Bible.  Not  only  was  Jesus 
the  content  of  this  book,  he  was  even  believed  to 
be  its  author.  It  was  the  spirit  of  Jesus  which 
dwelt  in  the  prophets  and  made  them  seek  and 
search  concerning  the  salvation  offered  by  Christ 
(I  Peter  1  :  10-11).  "The  prophets  having  their 
grace  from  him,  did  prophesy  unto  him,"  we  are 
told  in  the  so-called  letter  of  Barnabas.  So  the  Old 
Testament  seemed  to  be  a  Christian  book  both  in 
content  and  in  origin,  and  it  was  easy  enough  to  add 
some  properly  Christian  pamphlets,  as  Saint  Paul's 
letters  and  some  gospels,  the  Acts  and  other  letters, 
and  some  books  of  revelation.  It  was  as  necessary 
as  it  was  easy,  if  Christianity  was  not  to  lose  con- 
tact with  its  proper  origin. 

The  New  Testament,  as  we  have  it  now,  was  not 
complete  at  the  start.  It  was  a  collection  of  primi- 
tive Christian  writings,  larger  in'  some  ways  than 
it  is  now;  on  the  other  hand  lacking  some  of  its 


6  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

present  elements.  Its  precise  content  did  not  be- 
come finally  established  until  a  very  late  period,  not 
earlier  than  the  end  of  the  fourth  century. 

So  also  the  size  of  the  Old  Testament  was  not 
quite  fixed.  There  were  more  books  in  the  Greek 
Bible  of  the  Alexandrian  Jews  than  in  the  Hebrew 
Bible  of  the  Palestinian  rabbis.  The  Christian 
church  at  first  adopted  the  Greek  Bible,  but  from 
time  to  time  some  scholar  pointed  out  the  difference, 
and  many  people  thought  they  had  better  keep 
to  the  Hebrew  canon.  This  view,  championed  by 
Saint  Jerome,  led  to  a  partial  rejection  of  the  books 
which  nowadays  we  usually  call  the  Old  Testa- 
ment Apocrypha,  until  in  the  sixteenth  century  the 
churches  accentuated  their  difference  by  a  different 
attitude  toward  these  books,  the  Calvinists  rejecting 
them  altogether,  the  Roman  church  including  them 
as  an  integral  part  of  the  Bible,  and  the  Lutherans 
giving  them  an  intermediate  position  as  books  to 
be  read  with  safety  but  without  canonical  authority. 
When,  in  1902,  King  Edward  VII  was  to  be  crowned, 
the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society  intended  to  pre- 
sent to  his  Majesty  the  copy  of  the  Bible  on  which 
be  was  to  take  his  oath.  Then  it  was  discovered 
that  according  to  the  old  regulations  the  king  of 
England  had  to  take  his  oath  on  a  complete  Bible, 
that  is  a  Bible  containing  the  Apocrypha.  The 


THE  ALEXANDRIAN  CANON  7 

British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society  on  its  part,  by  its 
statutes,  was  prevented  from  printing  Bibles  includ- 
ing the  Apocrypha;  so  they  presented  to  the  king 
a  most  beautiful  copy,  but  the  king  did  not  use  it 
for  the  coronation  service.  It  is  the  difference  be- 
tween the  Alexandrian  and  the  Palestinian  canon 
which  reappears  in  this  little  struggle  and  thereby  is 
seen  surviving  to  our  own  time. 

Unsettled  as  the  size  of  the  Old  and  of  the  New 
Testament  may  have  been,  nevertheless  the  prin- 
ciple was  established  at  a  very  early  date  that 
Christianity  was  to  have  a  holy  Scripture  in  two 
parts,  one  taken  over  from  Judaism,  the  other 
added  from  its  own  stores. 

Let  us  stop  here  for  a  moment  and  try  to  realise 
what  this  meant.  Mohammed,  when  founding  his 
new  religion,  acknowledged,  it  is  true,  the  books  of 
the  former  religions,  but  for  his  own  believers  the 
unique  authority  is  the  Koran,  a  book  which  origi- 
nated within  a  single  generation  and  therefore  is 
pervaded  by  one  uniform  spirit.  Christianity  ad- 
hered to  a  Bible  whose  larger  part  originated  in  a 
period  much  anterior  to  its  own  and  in  a  religion 
inferior  to  Christianity.  The  Bible  covers  a  period 
of  over  a  thousand  years.  What  a  difference  in 
civilisation  between  the  nomadic  life  of  the  patri- 
archs and  the  time  of  Jesus!  What  a  difference  in 


8  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

spirit  between  the  sons  of  Jacob  killing  the  whole 
population  of  Sichem  in  order  to  avenge  their  sister 
and  Jesus'  parable  of  the  good  Samaritan!  or  be- 
tween the  prophet  Elijah  killing  four  hundred  and 
fifty  prophets  of  Baal  and  Jesus  preaching  the  love 
of  one's  enemies!  In  fact,  it  was  possible  to  over- 
come this  difference  only  in  an  age  which  did  not 
read  the  Bible  with  historical  notions.  Even  so, 
the  juxtaposition  caused  much  difficulty.  We  shall 
see  the  problem  of  the  Law  troubling  the  church 
through  all  the  centuries.  We  shall  find  the  notions 
of  sacrifice  and  priesthood  adapted  to  Christian  in- 
stitutions. Looking  at  Charlemagne  or  Calvin,  we 
realise  that  the  Old  Testament  is  ever  introducing 
its  views  into  Christian  minds,  as  authoritative  as 
any  word  of  the  gospel. 

Now,  at  the  beginning  the  influence  was  rather 
the  other  way;  the  Old  Testament  was  to  be  inter- 
preted in  the  light  of  the  New.  And,  in  truth,  much 
light  came  from  the  life  of  Jesus  to  the  history  of 
the  ancient  people  and  to  the  prophecies.  We  do 
not  wonder  that  Christian  minds  were  excited  by 
all  this  fresh  illumination,  and  we  must  not  wonder 
that  sometimes  they  remodelled  the  tradition  of  the 
life  of  Christ  to  accord  with  the  Old  Testament. 

The  harmony  between  the  two  Testaments  soon 
became  a  leading  idea  in  Christian  doctrine.  Some 


THE  TWO  TESTAMENTS  9 

heretics,  indeed,  would  not  accept  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. Marcion  maintained  that  it  came  from  an 
inferior  god,  while  the  supreme  God,  the  father  of 
our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  had  revealed  himself  only 
through  his  Son.  He  found  a  great  many  contrasts 
between  the  Old  and  the  New  Testament,  and  this 
criticism  was  supported  by  pagan  philosophers,  as, 
for  example,  Porphyry.  The  church,  therefore,  was 
most  anxious  to  establish  the  harmony  of  the  Testa- 
ments by  any  means  at  its  command.  Taste  varies 
from  century  to  century;  the  minute  parallelism 
constructed  by  some  early  Christian  writers,  and 
evidently  much  admired  by  their  contemporaries, 
seems  to  us  rather  ridiculous  and  fanciful.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  church  was  right  in  maintaining  the 
harmony.  The  New  Testament  needs  to  be  ex- 
plained from  the  Old  Testament;  it  is  open  to  much 
misunderstanding  when  taken  apart.  There  was 
almost  no  sense  for  historical  development  at  that 
time;  the  criticism  of  Ptolemseus,  in  his  famous  let- 
ter to  Flora,  where  he  speaks  of  several  strata  of 
revelation  running  through  the  Old  and  the  New 
Testament,  is  an  exceptional  one.  For  most  of  the 
faithful  the  Christian  doctrine  was  directly  looked 
for  and  found  in  the  Old  Testament;  the  gospel 
was  contained  in  every  one  of  its  books,  from  Gene- 
sis to  Malachi.  Unity  was  conceived  as  uniformity. 


10  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

This  was  the  system  which  appealed  most  to  the 
average  Christian  mind.  And  the  Bible  was  open 
to  all  Christians,  as  Harnack  has  brilliantly  demon- 
strated in  a  recent  publication.  The  ancient  church 
laid  stress  upon  this  publicity  and  never  tried  to 
withdraw  the  Bible  from  the  people.  There  was 
no  hidden  mystery  regarding  the  Bible.  On  the 
contrary,  all  members  of  the  church  were  anxiously 
urged  to  make  themselves  as  familiar  with  the  Bible 
as  possible.  They  were  supposed  to  have  copies  of 
their  own  and  to  read  them  privately  as  well  as  in 
the  congregation.  Even  when  the  struggles  about 
the  right  doctrine  began  and  the  heretics  sometimes 
held  to  the  Bible  as  their  champion  against  the 
doctrine  of  the  church,  the  church  did  not  remove 
the  Bible  from  public  discussion.  The  ecclesiasti- 
cal party  maintained  that  the  Bible  was  always  in 
favour  of  the  true  doctrine;  one  needs  but  to  know 
how  to  read  it.  Tertullian,  it  is  true,  once  in  the 
heat  of  controversy  declared  that  it  was  no  use 
arguing  against  heretics  from  the  Bible,  but  he  did 
it,  nevertheless,  and  so  did  the  other  fathers. 

The  Bible  proved  its  spiritual  value  to  the  expe- 
rience of  every  reader.  A  man  familiar  with  the 
Psalms  has  a  treasure  which  cannot  be  lost;  in  any 
situation  he  will  find  what  is  suitable  for  his  needs. 
If  one  looks  for  examples  of  faith,  the  author  of  the 


NO  PAGAN  BOOKS  11 

epistle  to  the  Hebrews  in  his  eleventh  chapter  gives 
a  splendid  model  for  finding  heroes  of  faith  all 
through  the  Bible.  The  book  of  Genesis,  especially 
its  first  chapters,  was  of  particular  interest  for 
most  of  the  readers  on  account  of  the  sublime 
description  there  given  of  the  beginnings  of  man- 
kind. The  creation  story  in  Genesis  implies  much 
more  than  even  the  finest  of  all  Greek  myths, 
namely,  the  myth  in  Plato's  Timseus,  with  which  it 
was  compared  by  the  emperor  Julian.  The  mighty 
words,  "In  the  beginning  God  created  heaven  and 
earth,"  proved  to  be  the  one  true  answer  to  all  the 
cosmological  questions  of  Greek  philosophy,  and  be- 
sides there  was  ample  room  for  introducing  what- 
ever was  wanted — such  as  the  creation  and  the  fall 
of  the  angels — if  only  one  knew  how  to  read  between 
the  lines. 

In  an  old  Christian  book  dealing  with  church 
regulations  and  the  rules  for  individual  Christian 
life  we  find  the  following  admonition  to  use  no 
other  book  at  all  except  the  Bible,  because,  as  the 
author  says,  the  Bible  contains  literature  of  every 
kind.  The  passage  runs:1 

Stay  at  home  and  read  in  the  Law  and  in  the  Book 
of  the  Kings  and  in  the  Prophets  and  in  the  Gospel 
(which  is)  the  fulness  of  these  things.  Keep  far  away 

1  Didascalia,  ch.  ii,  p.  5  in  Mrs.  M.  D.  Gibson's  translation. 


12  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

from  all  the  books  of  the  heathen;  for  what  hast  thou 
to  do  with  foreign  words  or  with  false  laws  or  prophe- 
cies which  also  easily  cause  young  people  to  wander 
from  the  faith?  What  then  is  wanting  to  thee  in  the 
Word  of  God,  that  thou  throwest  thyself  upon  these 
myths  of  the  heathen?  If  thou  wishes t  to  read  the 
tales  of  the  fathers,  thou  hast  the  Book  of  the  Kings; 
or  of  wise  men  and  philosophers,  thou  hast  the  Proph- 
ets amongst  whom  thou  wilt  find  more  wisdom  and 
science  than  among  the  wise  men  and  the  philosophers. 
because  they  are  the  words  of  God,  of  the  one  only  wise 
God.  If  thou  desirest  song,  thou  hast  the  Psalms  of 
David  or  if  the  beginning  of  the  world,  thou  hast  the 
Genesis  of  great  Moses;  if  law  and  commandments, 
thou  hast  the  book  of  Exodus  of  the  Lord  our  God. 
Therefore  keep  entirely  away  from  all  these  foreign 
things,  which  are  contrary  to  them. 

The  Bible,  in  fact,  pervaded  the  whole  life  of  a 
Christian.  It  was  the  Bible,  its  history,  its  com- 
mandments, that  he  was  taught  as  a  child  in  his 
parents'  home.  When  the  girls  gathered  in  the 
women's  hall  to  spin,  they  would  sing  and  talk 
about  God's  revelations  more  eagerly  than  even 
Sappho  had  praised  her  luxurious  love — according 
to  an  expression  used  by  Tatian  in  his  Apology. 
The  prayers,  private  as  well  as  ecclesiastical,  all 
echoed  Biblical  phrases,  and  even  at  burials  the 
Christians  sang  joyful  psalms. 

So  the  Bible  became  familiar  to  the  Christians 
of  that  time.  We  are  astonished  to  find  how  well 


BIBLE  READING  13 

they  knew  it.  The  sermons  of  this  period  are  full 
of  Biblical  allusions,  and  evidently  the  preacher 
could  expect  them  to  be  understood. 

This  is  the  more  remarkable  as  the  circulating  of 
the  Bible  in  this  time  met  with  the  greatest  difficul- 
ties. There  was,  of  course,  a  large  amount  of  Bible 
reading  in  the  congregations.  According  to  Justin's 
description  of  early  Christian  worship  about  150A.D., 
the  service  began  with  continuous  reading  of  the 
Bible  through  many  chapters,  as  far  as  time  would 
allow.  Then  an  officer,  bishop  or  elder,  would  begin 
to  preach.  The  office  of  reading  was  esteemed  so 
highly  that  it  was  regarded  as  based  on  a  special 
spiritual  gift;  the  anagnostes,  i.  e.y  the  reader,  in 
the  earliest  time  had  his  place  among  the  prophets 
and  spirit-gifted  teachers.  And,  in  fact,  if  we  look 
at  the  earliest  manuscripts  of  the  Bible  which  have 
come  down  to  us,  we  shall  almost  think  that  super- 
natural assistance  was  necessary  for  reading  them: 
no  punctuation,  no  accent,  no  space  between  the 
words,  no  breaking  off  at  the  end  of  a  sentence. 
The  reader  had  to  know  his  text  almost  entirely  by 
heart  to  do  it  well.  From  the  "Shepherd  of  Her- 
mas,"  a  very  interesting  book  written  by  a  Roman 
layman  about  140  A.  D.,  we  learn  that  some  peo- 
ple gathered  often,  probably  daily,  for  the  spe- 
cial purpose  of  common  reading  and  learning.  But 


14  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

even  granted  that  the  memory  of  these  men  was  not 
spoiled  by  too  much  reading,  as  is  ours,  so  that  by 
hearing  they  were  able  to  learn  by  heart — it  is  said 
of  some  rabbis  that  they  did  not  lose  one  word  of 
all  their  master  had  told  them,  and,  in  fact,  the  Tal- 
mudic  literature  was  transmitted  orally  for  centuries 
— nevertheless,  we  must  assume  that  these  Christians 
had  their  private  copies  of  the  Bible  at  home.  The 
evidence  from  the  allusions  of  preachers  to  private 
reading  is  strong.  Cyprian  addresses  a  Christian: 
"Your  life  should  be  one  of  assiduous  prayer  or 
reading  (of  the  Bible):  now  you  speaking  to  God, 
now  God  to  you." 

Here  begins  our  difficulty:  how  did  they  get  so 
many  copies?  There  was  an  organised  book-trade 
in  the  ancient  world;  publishers  had  their  offices, 
using  (instead  of  printing-presses)  slaves  who  were 
trained  in  copying;  they  had  shorthand  writers,  as 
well  as  calligraphers  to  do  the  fine  writing.  But  as 
long  as  Christianity  was  still  an  oppressed  religion 
it  is  doubtful  if  the  Bible  was  among  the  books 
which  publishers  would  care  to  take.  The  Chris- 
tians were,  most  of  them,  poor  people  who  could 
not  spend  much  money  for  procuring  Bibles.  Be- 
sides, it  was  no  easy  thing  to  get  a  complete  Bible. 
At  that  time  the  books  were  still  written  on  papy- 
rus rolls,  not  in  book  form.  Only  one  side  of  the 


g  *£?££»£ 


BIBLE  COPYING  15 

papyrus  could  be  used;  the  roll  would  become  un- 
wieldy if  too  long.  So,  in  order  to  get  all  the  books 
of  the  Old  and  the  New  Testament,  at  least  two 
dozen  rolls  had  to  be  written.  Maybe  a  simple  Chris- 
tian copied  for  himself  one  gospel  or  some  letters 
or  even  one  or  more  books  from  the  Old  Testament. 
There  are  preserved  on  papyrus  some  unfinished  at- 
tempts which  show  what  hard  work  it  was  (Plate  I). 
We  can  scarcely  imagine  a  man  going  with  this 
heavy  hand  through  all  the  books  of  the  Bible. 

We  are  told  that  wealthy  Christians  helped  their 
brethren  by  procuring  copies  for  them.  Origen,  the 
greatest  Bible  scholar  of  the  ancient  church,  is  said 
to  have  been  supported  by  a  rich  admirer,  who  put 
at  his  disposal  a  number  of  slave  copyists.  With 
their  help  he  succeeded  in  creating  one  of  the  great- 
est works  which  Bible  criticism  ever  undertook,  his 
so-called  Hexapla,  which  is  a  comparison  of  more 
than  six  various  Greek  translations  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. Scholars  in  the  nineteenth  century  held  that 
scarcely  more  than  one  copy  of  this  enormous  work 
had  ever  been  written,  but  by  recent  discoveries  we 
know  that  it  was  copied  several  times  (Plate  II). 
A  later  admirer  of  Origen,  Pamphilus,  is  said  always 
to  have  carried  with  him  several  rolls  in  order  to 
provide  poor  brethren.  Now  that  was  the  third 
century.  Christianity  had  already  begun  to  spread 


16  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

among  the  higher  classes  and  to  become  a  feature 
in  the  world's  life. 

Devotional  reading  of  the  Bible  was  accompanied 
by  scholarly  interpretation.  We  mentioned  Origen 
as  the  greatest  Bible  scholar  of  his  time,  if  not  of 
all  times.  It  may  be  worth  while  to  insert  here  a 
few  words  on  his  life.  A  native  of  Alexandria,  he 
saw  as  a  boy  his  father  dying  as  a  martyr  for  his 
Christian  faith;  he  longed  to  become  a  martyr  him- 
self, and  was  only  prevented  from  giving  himself  up 
by  a  trick  of  his  mother's,  who  concealed  all  his 
clothes.  He  got  a  good  training  at  the  catechetical 
school  of  Alexandria,  not  restricting  himself  to  mere 
Christian  and  Biblical  studies,  but  reading  the  pagan 
philosophers  of  his  time  as  well  as  the  Greek  classics. 
A  youth  of  only  eighteen  years,  he  became  the  head 
of  the  school,  and  his  fame  spread  all  over  the  em- 
pire. He  travelled  to  Rome,  to  Greece;  he  was 
even  asked  by  the  Roman  governor  to  come  to 
Arabia  to  settle  certain  questions.  So  zealous  was 
he  to  fulfil  the  commandments  of  the  gospel  that, 
misunderstanding  one  of  the  Lord's  sayings,  he 
made  himself  a  eunuch  for  the  kingdom  of  heav- 
en's sake,  which  brought  him  into  trouble  in  his 
later  life.  When  once  on  a  journey  through  Pales- 
tine he,  being  still  a  layman,  had  preached  before 
the  bishop  of  Ceesarea,  he  was  summoned  by  his 


yife&ClMWf 


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ndfc  U^*****!     *4UA*«4UI 

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. 

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PLATE  II— ORIGEN'S  HEXAPLA 

Fragment  found  in  the  Cairo-Genizah  and  published  by  E.  Taylor  in  1900:  parch- 
ment, fifth  century,  with  part  of  second,  third,  and  fourth  columns:  Ps  22: 
25-28;  used  later  for  copying  Hebrew  texts. 

From  "Hexapla  of  Origen,"  by  E.  Taylor,  published  by  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons. 


ORIGEN,  THE  BIBLE  SCHOLAR  17 

own  bishop  and  ordered  not  to  preach.  Some  years 
afterward  the  bishop  of  Csesarea,  who  was  among 
his  strongest  admirers,  ordained  him  a  priest,  which 
caused  his  bishop  to  banish  him  from  Alexandria. 
He  settled  at  Csesarea  and  lived  there  for  twenty 
years  without  ever  aiming  at  any  ecclesiastical  posi- 
tion, pursuing  his  study  of  the  Bible  and  gather- 
ing around  his  chair  the  best  men  from  every  part 
of  Christianity.  So  great  was  his  fame  that  the 
empress  Julia  Mammsea,  being  still  a  pagan,  asked 
him  to  see  her  when  she  was  travelling  in  the  East. 
He  was  the  one  man  to  refute  the  vigorous  attack 
made  against  the  truth  of  Christian  doctrine  by  the 
philosopher  Celsus.  When  persecution  began  again 
he  wrote  a  tractate  of  comfort,  "On  Martyrdom," 
and  another,  "On  Prayer."  He  himself  suffered 
imprisonment  and  torture,  and  died  after  his  release, 
as  a  result  of  these  sufferings,  at  the  age  of  sixty- 
nine. 

We  can  scarcely  do  honour  enough  to  this  man, 
who  three  centuries  after  his  death  was  proclaimed 
to  be  one  of  the  most  dangerous  heretics,  the  church, 
however,  using  his  learning  in  the  form  of  extracts. 
The  vast  amount  of  reading,  the  sagacity,  and  the 
perspicuity  of  the  man  are  alike  admirable.  He  is 
said  to  have  commented  upon  nearly  all  the  books 
of  the  Bible,  and  this  three  times.  He  wrote  short 


18  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

annotations,  he  compiled  large  and  learned  commen- 
taries, and  he  preached  before  the  congregation. 
Only  a  small  part  of  his  works  has  come  down  to  us, 
but  this  fills  volumes.  Origen's  great  merit  is  that  he 
brought  Christian  interpretation  to  a  system  which 
enabled  the  church  to  retain  the  plain  historical 
sense  alongside  the  so-called  higher  meaning. 

For  a  long  time  gentile  philosophers  as  well  as 
Jewish  preachers  had  adopted  the  method  of  treat- 
ing their  sacred  books  allegorically.  Homer,  it  was 
assumed,  in  telling  his  stories  of  battles  of  gods  and 
heroes,  meant  quite  another  thing;  otherwise  he 
would  be  guilty  of  irreligion.  He  meant  that  the 
powers  of  nature  and  the  energies  of  the  human  soul 
came  into  struggle,  and  therefore  virtues  and  vices 
were  fighting  one  with  another.  The  same  thing  was 
done  by  Philo  for  the  Old  Testament.  There  was  no 
real  history;  all  was  symbolical,  allegory.  Christi- 
anity tried  to  follow  in  this  path.  The  gnostics  in- 
dulged in  the  wildest  form  of  allegory.  But  it  was 
not  safe  to  give  up  the  idea  of  historicity  altogether. 
Jesus  and  his  gospel  were  historical  facts,  not  mere 
ideas;  they  were  emptied  of  all  meaning  if  turned 
into  allegory.  And  likewise  the  history  of  the  Old 
Testament  could  not  simply  be  reduced  to  allegorical 
metaphors.  Origen  saved  the  situation  by  assert- 
ing that  each  of  these  two  views  had  its  proper  place. 


THEORY  OF  INTERPRETATION  19 

His  theory  is  that  as  man  consists  of  body,  soul,  and 
spirit,  so  the  holy  Scripture  has  a  threefold  nature,  to 
which  corresponds  a  threefold  interpretation.  The 
body  stands  for  the  plain  historical  meaning:  Jesus 
did  cast  out  of  the  temple  those  that  sold  oxen 
and  sheep  and  doves  and  the  changers  of  money. 
There  are  some  historical  difficulties,  Origen  admits, 
if  we  compare  the  different  gospel  narratives  and  if 
we  take  account  of  the  fact  that  a  single  man  did 
this;  Origen  explains  that  it  was  a  miracle  showing 
the  divine  power  in  Jesus.  But  there  are  other  as- 
pects too.  The  soul  represents  the  higher  moral 
view:  Christ  is  always  casting  out  of  his  church, 
which  belongs  to  the  heavenly  Jerusalem,  the  men 
who  are  profaning  it  by  their  money-making. 
And,  lastly,  there  is  the  spirit,  that  is,  the  su- 
preme mystical  understanding.  The  spirit  of  Christ, 
entering  its  temple,  the  man's  soul,  casts  out  of 
it  all  earthly  desires  and  makes  it  a  house  of 
prayer.  Now  that  is  very  ingenious.  These  three 
strata  of  interpretation  allow  for  a  great  variety 
in  explanation  and  adaptation.  Origen  succeeds 
by  this  method  in  keeping  the  essential  historical 
basis  and  adding  what  in  those  days  was  thought 
to  be  most  significant.  The  Bible,  being  a  divine 
book,  seemed  to  require  a  higher  form  of  inter- 
pretation; the  Holy  Ghost  of  God  was  supposed 


20  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

to  be  a  spirit  of  mysteries;  it  was  assumed  that 
to  interpret  the  Bible  in  a  plain  way  was  to  think 
of  God  meanly. 

Of  course,  the  Bible  contained  some  allegories 
which  might  seem  to  support  this  theory  of  allegor- 
ical interpretation;  for  instance,  the  beautiful  vision 
of  Ezekiel,  told  in  the  thirty-seventh  chapter  of  his 
book:  he  sees  the  valley  full  of  dry  bones,  and  at  the 
command  of  God  he  prophesies  over  them  and  they 
begin  to  come  together,  and  flesh  came  up  and  skin 
covered  them  above  and  at  last  breath  came  into 
them  and  they  lived.  It  is  a  magnificent  allegory 
of  the  people  of  Israel,  scattered  in  the  exile  and 
brought  to  life  again  by  the  power  of  God.  It 
is  irritating  to  see  the  fathers  just  at  this  point  de- 
clining to  follow  the  path  of  allegorical  interpreta- 
tion. They  insist  upon  the  reality  of  the  occurrence; 
it  is  to  be  taken  literally  as  resurrection  of  the  dead 
— so  it  has  influenced  all  mediaeval  pictures  of  the 
last  judgment !  I  need  only  add  that  the  rabbis  took 
Ezekiel's  description  in  the  same  way,  as  a  real  oc- 
currence, arguing  for  the  historicity  by  showing  the 
phylacteries  which  the  risen  persons  had  worn — and 
one  feels  what  a  pity  it  is  to  treat  allegory  as  his- 
tory. But  the  opposite  fault  is  still  worse:  the 
spiritualising  and  allegorising  of  real  history  is  the 
greatest  damage  ever  done  to  religion. 


AUTHORITY  OF  THE  BIBLE  21 

Theologians  tried  to  establish  the  authority  of  the 
Bible.  This  had  already  been  done  in  some  mea- 
sure by  the  rabbis  of  the  synagogue.  In  taking 
over  the  Bible  the  Christians  had  only  to  accept 
their  estimate  of  it,  but  they  were  not  quite  satis- 
fied with  it.  The  rabbinical  doctrine  was  a  rather 
mechanical  one:  God  had  used  men,  just  as  a  man 
uses  a  pencil  to  write  with.  The  pencil  does  not 
act  consciously:  so  the  Old  Testament  writers,  ac- 
cording to  this  theory,  did  not  take  any  part  in 
what  they  were  writing;  it  was  to  them  as  another 
man's  script.  Commenting  upon  the  last  chapter 
of  Deuteronomy,  where  the  death  of  Moses  is  de- 
scribed, a  rabbinical  authority  remarks :  "  Until  this 
passage  God  dictated  and  Moses  wrote;  henceforth 
God  dictated  and  Moses  wrote  weeping" — namely, 
the  account  of  his  own  death.  There  was  so  little 
interest  in  the  human  author  that  he  could  be  elimi- 
nated altogether.  We  are  told  by  an  early  Jewish 
legend  that  all  books  of  the  Old  Testament  had  been 
destroyed  at  the  time  of  Nebuchadnezzar,  when  the 
temple  was  burned;  so  God  dictated  them  all  to  Ezra. 
According  to  this  theory  Ezra  would  be  the  real 
author  of  the  whole  Old  Testament.  This  is  the 
most  mechanical  way  of  representing  the  equal  in- 
spiration of  all  parts  of  the  Old  Testament.  The 
Jews  of  the  dispersion  had  a  somewhat  similar  theory 


22  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

about  the  inspiration  of  their  Greek  Bible;  when 
Ptolemy  Philadelphia,  king  of  Egypt,  gathered  at 
Alexandria  seventy  elders  of  the  Jews  to  make  the 
Greek  translation  of  their  law,  he  put  each  one  of 
them  in  a  separate  cell  in  order  to  avoid  any  com- 
munication between  them,  so  the  legend  runs.  Then, 
after  working  for  seventy  days,  all  at  once  they 
shouted  "Amen"  from  their  cells,  having  accom- 
plished their  task,  and  when  the  seventy  copies  had 
been  compared  they  were  found  to  agree  even  in  the 
smallest  detail.  Here  we  have  again  an  attempt  to 
assert  inspiration  not  only  for  the  book  itself  but 
also  for  its  translation.  It  is  as  mechanical  as  the 
former,  all  human  co-operation  being  excluded. 

Christians  did  not  want  this.  In  Jesus  they  had 
experienced  living  revelation;  they  had  prophets 
among  themselves.  So,  at  least  at  the  beginning, 
they  had  a  much  higher  view  of  inspiration.  God 
enters  a  man's  soul  and  fills  it  with  his  spirit;  now  the 
man  acts  and  speaks  in  the  power  of  this  spirit,  and 
yet  he  is  not  unconscious  of  his  own  doing  and  speak- 
ing. There  are  two  ways  of  inspiration,  we  are  told 
by  Clement  of  Alexandria:  either  God  snatches  up 
the  man's  soul  and  conducts  it  to  the  unseen  world 
and  shows  to  it  whatever  he  wishes  it  to  know — 
this  is  ecstasy — or  God  enters  the  man  and  fills  him 
and  makes  him  his  organ.  The  latter,  less  striking 


THEORIES  OF  INSPIRATION  23 

though  it  appears,  is  nevertheless  the  higher  and 
more  valuable  concept.  Therefore  the  fathers  do 
not  so  much  use  the  metaphor  of  the  pencil  as  the 
similitude  of  a  musical  instrument,  whether  a  flute 
through  which  the  Holy  Spirit  is  playing,  or  a  harp 
which  he  touches  with  a  plectrum. 

Much  as  they  appreciate  the  holy  Scripture,  the 
early  fathers  usually  talk  about  it  in  a  very  unpre- 
tentious manner.  They  have  not  yet  developed 
those  gorgeous  formulas  of  quotation  which  are  used 
in  later  times.  They  quote  simply:  "Scripture 
says,"  or  "Paul  says,"  not  "the  holy  and  glorious 
apostle  in  his  most  excellent  epistle  to  the  Romans 
says  exceedingly  well."  They  talk  in  simple  words, 
but  they  are  prepared  even  to  die  for  this  Bible. 

Eusebius,  the  first  historian  of  the  Christian 
church,  to  whom  we  are  indebted  for  so  much  in- 
valuable information,  tells  us  a  moving  story  about 
Marinus,  a  young  Christian  officer  in  the  Roman 
army,  at  Ceesarea,  in  Palestine.  He  had  the  con- 
fidence of  his  superiors  and  was  to  be  promoted  to 
the  higher  rank  of  captain.  Then  out  of  jealousy 
one  of  his  comrades  denounced  him  as  a  Christian. 
Summoned  before  his  colonel,  he  was  asked  if  this 
was  true,  and  when  he  confessed  he  was  urged  to 
abjure  his  faith.  The  colonel  gave  him  three  hours' 
time.  So  he  went  to  the  small  Christian  church, 


24  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

where  he  found  the  venerable  old  bishop.  The 
bishop,  hearing  his  story,  took  the  Bible  in  one 
hand  and  the  soldier's  sword  in  the  other.  "This 
is  your  choice,"  he  said.  And  the  soldier,  without 
hesitating,  grasped  the  Bible,  went  back,  and  de- 
clared himself  to  be  and  to  remain  a  Christian. 
And  instead  of  receiving  military  promotion  he 
became  a  martyr. 

It  is  a  significant  little  story.  Indeed,  after  a  hard 
struggle,  lasting  through  nearly  three  centuries,  when 
the  Roman  empire  found  it  necessary  to  attempt  the 
final  destruction  of  Christianity  the  attack  was 
mostly  directed  against  the  Bible.  Diocletian,  in 
303  A.  D.,  on  the  24th  of  February,  issued  an  edict 
ordering  all  Christian  churches  to  be  destroyed  and 
all  Bibles  to  be  burned.  He  relied  on  the  Roman 
law,  which  forbids  not  only  the  exercise  of  magical 
arts,  but  the  science  of  magic,  too,  and  therefore 
condemns  all  books  of  magic  to  be  burned.  The 
Christians  were  accused  of  employing  magic,  and 
their  Bible  was  treated  as  a  magical  book. 

We  have  thrilling  accounts  of  Christians  try- 
ing to  conceal  their  treasured  Bible  rolls  from  the 
eyes  of  the  inquiring  officials.  They  took  them 
from  the  church  into  their  private  homes,  securing 
the  Bible  in  safety  but  many  a  time  bringing  per- 
secution upon  themselves.  To  the  officials  they 


BIBLE  PERSECUTION  25 

surrendered  books  of  various  kinds  in  order  to 
escape  from  surrendering  the  Scriptures.  Asked  if 
they  had  sacred  books  in  their  houses,  many  of 
them  would  answer:  "Yes,  in  our  hearts."  The  en- 
thusiasm was  so  great  that  they  believed  the  story 
of  any  miracle  in  support  of  the  Bible.  They  main- 
tained that  copies  of  the  Bible  which  had  been 
thrown  into  the  fire  by  the  heathen  were  not  burned 
or  even  touched  by  the  flame. 

Naturally  there  were  others  who  were  not  strong 
enough  in  their  faith  to  resist,  but  these  "  surrender- 
ee," as  they  were  called,  were  cast  out  of  the  church 
and  never  admitted  again.  During  the  fourth  cen- 
tury to  bring  against  a  clergyman  the  charge  of 
having  surrendered  sacred  books  at  that  period  of 
persecution  was  felt  to  be  the  most  serious  accusa- 
tion possible.  Even  to  be  ordained  by  a  bishop  who 
was  under  suspicion  of  having  surrendered  his 
church's  holy  Scriptures  was  held  a  disgrace  by  a 
large  party  of  zealous  Christians  who  demanded 
that  orders  of  this  kind  be  invalidated.  The  records 
of  a  trial  held  at  Carthage  in  329  A.  D.  dealing  with 
this  question  have  come  down  to  us.  Here  docu- 
ments from  303  A.  D.  were  introduced  as  evidence 
against  the  clergy,  and  the  whole  forms  one  of  the 
most  illuminating  pages  of  church  history. 

Even  to  be  found  reading  the  Bible  made  a  man 


26  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

guilty  of  obstinate  resistance  to  the  emperor's  law 
and  involved  him  in  penalty.  There  was  a  deacon 
at  Catania  in  Sicily  named  Euplus.  He  was  read- 
ing the  holy  Scripture  when  the  sheriff  laid  hold  of 
him.  Brought  before  the  judge  he  takes  his  copy  of 
the  Gospel  and  reads  from  it  (Matt.  5:10):  "  Blessed 
are  they  that  have  been  persecuted  for  right- 
eousness' sake,  for  theirs  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven/' 
and  (Matt.  10  :  38):  "And  he  that  doth  not  take 
his  cross  and  follow  after  me,  is  not  worthy  of  me." 
The  judge  asks  him:  "Why  did  you  not  surrender 
those  volumes  which  the  emperors  forbade?"  "Be- 
cause," he  replies,  "I  am  a  Christian  and  it  was 
not  loyal  to  surrender.  It  is  better  to  die  than  to 
surrender."  We  do  not  need  the  addition  made  by  a 
late  Byzantine  hagiographer  that  the  copy  of  the 
Gospels  was  hung  on  his  neck  when  he  was  con- 
ducted to  execution.  It  is  clear  enough  that  he 
was  suffering  for  his  devotion  toward  the  Bible  and 
that  it  was  the  gospel  which  inspired  his  boldness. 

Euplus  does  not  stand  alone.  I  could  mention  a 
dozen  martyrs  whose  acts  all  give  the  same  impres- 
sion. Sometimes  a  gathering  of  men  and  women 
is  apprehended  while  reading  the  Bible,  and  the 
whole  company  is  forthwith  carried  away  to  the 
most  painful  tortures. 

These  Christians   knew  what  the  Bible  was  to 


BIBLE  MARTYRS  27 

them.  All  declamations  of  later  theologians  about 
the  inspiration  and  the  authority  of  the  Bible  count 
for  nothing  compared  with  this  testimony. 

After  all,  we  do  not  wonder  that  the  Bible  became 
a  civilising  power  as  soon  as  Christianity  had  won 
its  victory. 


II 

THE  BIBLE  BEGINS  TO  RULE  THE  CHRISTIAN 
EMPIRE  (325-600  A.  D.) 

AFTER  the  persecution  by  Diocletian  a  new  era 
began.  Constantine  proclaimed  tolerance,  and  by 
and  by  Christianity  became  the  religion  of  the  em- 
pire. The  victory  of  Christianity  was  a  victory 
of  the  Bible  as  well.  This  finds  its  expression  in 
the  remarkable  fact  that  the  first  Christian  emperor, 
the  immediate  successor  of  those  who  persecuted  the 
Bible  and  tried  to  destroy  it,  ordered  fifty  splendid 
copies  of  the  Bible  to  be  prepared  at  his  expense 
for  the  churches  of  the  newly  founded  capital,  Con- 
stantinople. Some  scholars  have  thought  that  one 
or  two  of  these  copies  still  survive  in  the  famous 

manuscript  discovered  by  Tischendorf  in  the  Con- 

' 
vent  of  Mount  Sinai  (Plate  III),  or  in  the  Codex 

Vaticanus  at  Rome.  I  venture  rather  to  think  that 
both  copies  belong  to  the  period  of  Constantine's 
sons.  But  the  fact  that  the  Bible,  after  a  period  of 
destruction  when  most  of  the  earlier  copies  were 
burned,  got  a  surprising  circulation  under  official 
direction  accounts,  I  think,  for  a  puzzling  feature  in 

28 


1 


.2  2  S 

v  S 


III 

.2-   ~ 

?|| 
"I  § 

III 
liu 


I    1- 

x?s 

H    Sog 

7g 


. 

HI 

111 

00    3     g 


5 

2g  I 

in 


BIBLE  MANUSCRIPTS  29 

the  transmission  of  the  text.  From  the  Old  Latin 
and  the  Old  Syriac,  as  well  as  from  the  testimony  of 
the  fathers,  we  can  infer  that  various  forms  of  the 
Greek  text  must  once  have  been  widely  circulated, 
which  have  now  almost  disappeared,  whereas  most 
of  our  present  Greek  manuscripts  give  a  text  evi- 
dently based  on  a  late  official  recension.  Look- 
ing at  Diocletian's  attempt  to  destroy  the  Bible 
altogether  and  at  Constantine's  official  order  to  pro- 
vide a  large  number  of  manuscripts,  we  easily  un- 
derstand the  situation.  The  older  forms  of  text 
had  been  swept  away;  now  there  was  room  to  sup- 
ply their  place  with  the  learned  attempts  of  later 
scholars  from  the  schools  of  Origen  or  Lucian  who 
endeavoured  to  bring  in  more  critical  texts. 

Another  change  is  to  be  mentioned  at  the  same 
time.  The  old  form  of  papyrus  rolls  became  obso- 
lete and  the  parchment  book  took  its  place.  The 
use  of  this  latter  form  seems  to  originate  in  the  law 
schools;  the  codex,  or  parchment  book,  is  at  first 
the  designation  of  a  Roman  law-book.  But  at 
an  early  date  the  Christian  church  adopted  this 
form  as  the  more  convenient  one  and  gave  it  its 
circulation.  We  hardly  say  too  much  when  we  call 
the  Bible  the  means  by  which  our  present  form  of 
book  came  into  general  use.  Even  if  the  Bible  had 
done  nothing  else  for  civilisation  than  to  give  man- 


30  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

kind  the  shape  of  its  books  that  would  be  a  great 
deal  (Plate  IV). 

The  form  of  a  parchment  book,  or  codex,  would 
admit  of  the  copying  of  several  books  in  one  volume. 
The  great  Bibles  of  the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries  of 
which  we  know  contained  all  the  books;  they  formed 
one  volume.  So  the  internal  unity  running  through 
the  Bible  as  a  whole  came  to  be  represented  even 
in  the  outward  form. 

The  copying  of  the  Bible  went  on  rapidly,  monks 
and  noble  Christian  ladies  undertaking  it  as  a  form 
of  ascetic  work,  providing  a  heavenly  merit  and 
sometimes  earning  bread  and  butter,  too.  Instead 
of  the  plain  copies  in  an  unskilled  hand  we  now  find 
sumptuous  books  of  the  finest  parchment  with 
purple  colouring,  in  the  most  luxurious  manuscripts 
the  sacred  text  being  written  in  gold  and  silver,  and 
the  margin  sometimes  being  covered  with  beautiful 
paintings.  A  copy  of  Genesis  in  Greek  at  the 
Vienna  library  has  forty-eight  water-colours,  one  at 
the  bottom  of  each  page,  telling  the  same  story  as 
the  text.  The  manuscript  when  complete  must  have 
had  sixty  folios:  this  gives  one  hundred  and  twenty 
of  such  decorated  pages  for  Genesis,  and  if  it  con- 
tained the  whole  Pentateuch  we  may  allow  for  five 
hundred  and  ten  illustrations  (Plate  V).  And  this 
manuscript  does  not  stand  alone;  it  is  but  one  of 


PLATE  IV— ROLL  AND  BOOK 

St.  Luke  the  Evangelist  copying  from  a  roll  into  a  book  (codex  form):  miniature 

from  a  Greek  manuscript  at  the  Vatican  library  (gr.  1158),  eleventh  century. 

From  "Vatikanische  Miniaturen."     Copyright  by  B.  Herder,  Freiburg. 


BOOK  AND  ROLL  31 

a  large  group  of  illuminated  manuscripts.  This 
sumptuous  appearance  may  be  taken  as  a  sign  of 
the  value  attached  to  the  Bible.  Persecuted  hitherto, 
it  became  the  ruler  of  the  Christian  empire,  invested 
with  all  the  glory  of  royalty. 

The  place  given  to  the  Bible  is  best  shown  by  the 
fact  that  it  presided  over  the  great  councils,  a  copy 
of  the  Bible  lying  upon  the  presidential  chair.  It 
was  meant  as  a  symbol  for  Christ  himself  taking  the 
place  of  honour  and  deciding  the  great  questions  of 
faith.  The  same  holds  true  for  non-ecclesiastical 
assemblies.  In  an  ordinance  of  the  emperor  Theo- 
dosius  it  is  required  that  a  copy  of  the  Bible  be 
present  in  every  court-room.  The  Bible,  or  rather 
the  Gospels,  or  to  speak  even  more  precisely  the 
most  prominent  page  in  them,  the  beginning  of  the 
first  chapter  of  St.  John's  Gospel,  was  used  for  tak- 
ing an  oath.  The  worn  condition  of  this  page  in 
many  a  manuscript  still  attests  this  use. 

Presiding  over  the  courts,  the  Bible  began  at  once 
to  exercise  its  influence  upon  the  Law.  We  can  al- 
ready trace  this  influence  in  the  legislation  of  Con- 
stantine  himself:  when  he  forbids  to  brand  a  crimi- 
nal on  his  face,  giving  as  reason  that  the  image  of 
God  ought  not  to  be  marred,  it  is  the  Biblical  no- 
tion of  the  man's  face  being  the  likeness  of  God  which 
underlies  this  law.  When,  in  a  law  published  in  334, 


32  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

he  insists  that  no  man,  whoever  he  is  and  whatever 
rank  he  has,  shall  be  admitted  as  a  solitary  witness 
unless  supported  by  another  witness,  it  is  the  well- 
known  Biblical  rule  that  at  the  mouth  of  two  or 
three  witnesses  every  word  shall  be  established. 
When  he  makes  divorce  more  difficult,  denying  the 
right  of  remarriage  to  the  man  who  repudiates  his 
wife  without  sufficient  reason  on  her  part,  we  feel 
that  it  is  the  injunction  of  Jesus  which  is  behind 
this  law.  I  would  not  say  the  same  of  all  parts  of 
this  legislation  which  various  scholars  have  adduced 
as  proving  Christian  influence.  Roman  law  from 
the  second  century  was  influenced  to  a  large  extent 
by  the  Stoa,  all  the  famous  lawyers  such  as  Gaius 
and  Paulus  belonging  to  this  school  and  introducing 
its  ideas  into  the  practice  of  the  courts  and  into  the 
legislation  of  the  magistrates,  especially  of  the  em- 
peror. There  is  an  evident  development  in  the 
Roman  law  toward  a  more  humane  conception  of 
slavery;  this  is  due  to  the  Stoa.  The  views  on  mar- 
riage and  divorce,  the  position  of  "natural  chil- 
dren," as  the  Roman  law  calls  illegitimates,  all  this 
is  largely  due  to  non-Christian  influences.  Never- 
theless, there  are  unmistakable  traces  of  a  particu- 
lar influence  of  the  Bible  upon  the  legislation  of  the 
Christian  emperors,  and  this  influence  increases  from 
decade  to  decade.  Constantine  gives  a  rather  vague 


The 


PLATE  V— VIENNA  GENESIS 

paradise:  Adam  and  Eve  appear  three  times:  (1)  under  the  tree  of  knowledge, 
Gen.  3  :  6;  (2)  when  discovering  their  nakedness,  3  :  7;  (3)  when  hiding  them- 
selves from  the  Lord  among  the  trees,  3  :  8.  The  divine  voice,  represented 
by  the  hand  from  heaven,  belongs  to  this  third  scene;  it  is  put  in  the  centre 
merely  for  artistic  reasons. 

From  "Die  Wiener  Genesis."     F.  Tempsky,  Vienna. 


ROMAN  LAW  33 

ordinance  for  keeping  Sunday  as  a  day  on  which 
courts  are  not  to  be  held.  Theodosius  is  much 
stricter;  and  the  climax  is  reached  with  Justinian, 
when  Sunday  has  become  a  legal  holiday. 

Justinian,  of  course,  codifies  the  Roman  law,  but 
his  Novelise,  the  laws  issued  by  himself,  show  the 
new  spirit  of  a  legislation  ruled  by  the  Bible.  He 
sometimes  refers  directly  to  the  Bible  as  authority. 
Still  more  is  this  spirit  prevalent  in  some  provincial 
codes.  One  of  these  says  that  everything  has  to 
be  judged  according  to  the  ancient  and  to  the  mod- 
ern law,  i.  e.,  the  law  of  Moses,  which  antedates  the 
laws  of  all  other  nations,  and  the  law  of  Christ,  as 
it  is  contained  in  the  laws  of  the  emperors  Con- 
stantine,  Theodosius,  and  Leo.  Lawyers  of  this  pe- 
riod indulge  in  comparisons  between  the  Roman  law 
and  the  law  of  Moses. 

The  Roman  empire  was  Latin  in  some  respects, 
Greek  in  others.  Latin  was  the  official  language  of 
the  court,  of  the  law,  of  the  army.  But  the  popula- 
tion spoke  mostly  Greek,  though  from  the  third 
century  on  large  parts  used  their  native  language, 
Syriac  and  Coptic,  as  well.  The  Bible  had  been 
translated  into  these  languages  during  the  former 
period.  Now  the  general  political  situation  brings 
the  empire  into  contact  with  the  Goths  in  the  North, 
with  Armenians  and  Georgians  in  the  East,  with 


34  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

Libyans  and  Ethiopians  in  the  South.  As  soon  as  the 
empire  gains  any  influence  among  these  neighbour- 
ing peoples,  the  Christian  mission  tries  to  get  hold 
of  them  and  we  see  the  Bible  translated  into  these 
languages,  which  hitherto  have  had  no  writing.  The 
Bible  marks  for  these  peoples  the  beginning  of  a 
national  literature.  Their  alphabets  were  made 
up  from  the  Greek,  thus  showing  that  the  read- 
ing of  the  Bible  with  these  nations  began  in  con- 
nection with  their  intercourse  with  the  Roman 
empire. 

The  Bible  ruled  even  the  Greek  language  of  this 
empire.  There  are  many  changes  in  the  later  Greek 
which  are  surely  due  to  familiarity  with  the  Bible. 
Words  previously  unknown  in  Greek  or  used  in  a 
different  sense  became  quite  familiar;  everybody 
knows  what  is  the  meaning  of  Beelzebub,  Messiah, 
Paradise,  Satan,  and  that  an  angel  is  not  a  mere 
messenger,  but  is  a  messenger  from  God,  a  spiritual 
being,  and  that  the  word  demon  always  means  an 
unclean  spirit. 

Moreover,  the  Bible  influenced  the  style  of  the 
writers,  especially  of  the  great  preachers.  One  may 
distinguish  three  forms  of  influence  in  this  depart- 
ment: artificial  imitation;  naive  use  of  Biblical 
names  and  phrases  (what  is  usually  called  in  Ger- 
many the  language  of  Canaan) ;  and,  lastly,  the  un- 


LANGUAGES  AND  STYLE  35 

conscious  influence  which  the  style  of  any  book  ex- 
erts upon  a  careful  reader.  I  do  not  think  that  there 
are  many  instances  of  artificial  imitation  in  this  pe- 
riod. Sometimes  a  preacher  skilfully  composed  his 
whole  sermon  by  adding  Biblical  quotation  to  quo- 
tation; asked  to  preach  a  sermon  on  a  saint's  day, 
he  did  nothing  else  than  comment  upon  the  saint's 
life  in  Biblical  phrases.  The  second  type  of  influ- 
ence is  very  common;  the  present  emperor  is  usually 
spoken  of  as  the  new  David;  the  story  of  a  war  is 
always  told  as  if  David  were  fighting  the  Philistines; 
each  heretic  is  entitled  to  be  called  the  new  Judas 
Iscariot  who  betrays  his  Lord.  The  most  famous 
example  of  this  kind  is  the  sermon  attributed  to 
Chrysostom  after  his  first  return  to  Constantinople, 
when  he  had  fled  from  the  wrath  of  the  empress: 
"Again  Herodias  is  furious,  again  she  flurries,  again 
she  dances,  again  she  desires  the  Baptist's  head  to 
be  cut  off  by  Herod."  The  preacher's  own  Christian 
name,  of  course,  was  John,  and  the  empress  was 
trying  to  get  rid  of  him  for  political  reasons. 

The  most  important  influence,  however,  is  the 
unconscious  influence  simply  from  the  use  of  the 
Bible.  The  great  power  of  Chrysostom's  sermons 
was  partly  due  to  his  eminent  rhetorical  talent  and 
training.  He  knew  how  to  gain  his  hearers'  at- 
tention; yet  for  the  greater  part  his  thorough  ac- 


36  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

quaintance  with  the  Bible  seems  to  be  responsible. 
Reading  the  sermons  of  those  great  Greek  Christian 
orators  of  the  fourth  century,  we  are  often  struck 
by  the  embedded  quotations  from  the  Bible.  In 
the  midst  of  this  fluent  Greek  there  is  something 
quite  different,  something  stern,  something  austere, 
something  dignified  and  solemn,  which  immediately 
appeals  to  the  hearer.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
preachers  themselves,  proud  as  they  were  of  their 
classical  training,  had  rather  the  opposite  impres- 
sion; they  apologise  for  introducing  barbarous  lan- 
guage. Chrysostom  insists,  in  many  a  sermon,  on 
the  idea  that  the  apostles  were  fishermen,  unskilled 
in  literary  style,  and  that  it  is  one  of  the  proofs  of 
inspiration  that  those  men  could  write  at  all.  He 
evidently  is  not  aware  of  the  fact,  clear  to  us,  that 
it  is  just  the  vigour  and  strength  of  Biblical  lan- 
guage which  gave  to  his  own  sermons  their  mag- 
nificent effect.  He  was  filled  with  Biblical  phrase- 
ology as  was  no  other  preacher  of  his  time.  He 
himself  did  not  realise  it,  nor  did,  I  presume,  the 
greater  part  of  his  congregation,  yet  it  was  this 
which  so  impressed  them.  If  only  the  modern  edi- 
tors would  note  all  the  Biblical  allusions  in  his  works! 
Yet  they  are  hardly  able  even  to  recognise  them. 
We  find  preachers  noted  for  their  brilliancy  in  ex- 
temporaneous speaking,  and  usually  the  remark  is 


CRAFTS  AND  ARTS  37 

added,  it  was  because  the  speaker  knew  the  Scrip- 
tures by  heart. 

In  this  way  the  people  became  accustomed  to 
Biblical  phraseology,  and  we  do  not  wonder  that 
at  last  the  colloquial  Greek  also  was  influenced  by 
the  Bible.  We  can  trace  its  influence  even  in  the 
romances. 

The  Bible  ruled  the  home  and  the  daily  life; 
people  had  their  furniture  decorated  with  Biblical 
symbols;  lamps  showed  Noah's  ark  or  Jonah's 
whale,  Jesus  with  his  disciples  in  a  ship  or  Jesus 
treading  upon  the  lion  and  adder,  the  serpent  and 
dragon  (according  to  Psalm  91).  At  the  Strassburg 
Museum  there  is  a  beautiful  engraved  glass  cup 
made  probably  in  a  Roman  manufactory  in  Cologne. 
On  one  side  is  engraved  Abraham  sacrificing  Isaac, 
on  the  other  side  Moses  striking  water  from  the  rock. 
Rich  people  wore  sumptuous  garments  embroidered 
with  representations  of  Biblical  scenes.  The  preach- 
ers complain  that  these  people  wear  the  miracles  of 
Christ  on  their  coats  instead  of  taking  them  to 
their  heart  and  conscience. 

The  great  officials  of  the  empire  used  to  give  to 
their  friends  ivory  tablets  commemorating  their 
honours.  In  former  times  they  had  represented  on 
them  the  emperor,  the  empress,  or  their  own  por- 
traits, and  scenes  from  the  circus;  now  they  chose 


38  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

Biblical  subjects.  People  liked  to  have  long  rolls 
exhibiting  the  wars  and  triumphs  of  an  emperor  in 
a  continuous  series  of  drawings.  Two  gigantic  rolls 
of  this  kind  may  still  be  seen  at  Rome;  I  mean  the 
columns  of  Trajan  and  of  Marcus  Aurelius.  Chris- 
tian art  produced  rolls  of  the  same  kind,  exhibiting 
the  story  of  Joshua's  battles  (Plate  VI).  Senators 
and  noble  ladies  vied  with  each  other  in  arranging 
the  history  of  the  Bible  and  especially  the  life  of 
Jesus  in  the  form  of  poems,  each  word  of  which  was 
taken  either  from  Homer  or  from  Vergil.  It  is  a 
wonderful  mixture  of  Bible  and  classical  culture. 

The  Bible  rules  not  only  the  public  and  the  pri- 
vate life,  but  also  the  church  and  its  organisations. 
At  the  beginning  the  Christians  were  afraid  of 
comparing  the  Old  Testament  rites  with  the  ec- 
clesiastical institutions.  The  Law  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment belonged  to  an  earlier  form  of  religion;  it  was 
abolished  by  the  New  Testament.  Christ,  accord- 
ing to  Saint  Paul,  was  the  end  of  the  Law.  But  by 
and  by  the  Old  and  the  New  Testament  were  brought 
nearer  together.  An  author  of  the  first  century 
remarks  that  God  by  his  commandments  in  the  Old 
Testament  has  shown  himself  to  be  a  lover  of  order, 
therefore  in  the  Christian  congregation,  too,  order 
ought  to  rule.  He  does  not  call  the  Christian  com- 
munion a  sacrifice,  the  Christian  minister  a  priest; 


CHURCH  SERVICE  39 

but  his  parallelism  comes  very  near  to  this,  and  a 
century  later  the  step  is  taken.  It  becomes  usual 
to  speak  of  bishop,  elders,  and  deacons  as  high- 
priest,  priests,  and  Levites.  Later  on,  even  the 
minor  degrees  were  taken  back  to  Biblical  models: 
the  subdeacon,  lector,  exorcist,  acolyte,  janitor  were 
found  represented  in  the  Old  Testament.  The 
clergy  formed  a  separate  class  as  distinct  from  other 
people  as  the  tribe  of  Levi  was  among  the  tribes  of 
Israel.  It  was  upon  the  authority  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment that  they  claimed  rights  and  prerogatives  to 
be  given  and  guaranteed  by  the  empire.  The 
monks  found  their  models  in  Elijah  and  Elisha; 
common  life  was  represented  by  the  apostles;  peni- 
tents were  Job,  David,  and  the  people  of  Nineveh; 
widows  (as  ecclesiastical  functionaries)  had  their 
models  in  Naomi,  Hannah,  Tabitha,  etc.  The  church 
was  the  tabernacle  of  Moses  and  the  temple  of  Sol- 
omon, and  each  detail  in  the  description  of  these 
Biblical  buildings  was  made  to  agree  with  a  feature 
in  the  Christian  church  by  means  of  allegorical  in- 
terpretation. The  feasts  of  the  church  correspond 
to  the  feasts  of  the  Old  Testament;  Easter  is  usu- 
ally called  Passover,  and  Whitsuntide  Pentecost.  At 
a  rather  early  date  a  festival  of  the  dedication  of  the 
individual  church  was  introduced  to  correspond 
with  the  festival  of  the  dedication  of  the  temple. 


40  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

As  the  Jews  kept  two  days  in  the  week  for  fasting, 
so  did  the  Christians,  choosing  Wednesday  and 
Friday  instead  of  Monday  and  Thursday;  and  in 
doing  so  they  remembered  that  it  was  on  a  Wednes- 
day that  Jesus  was  betrayed  by  Judas  and  on  a 
Friday  that  he  died  on  the  cross.  Even  the  usual 
hours  for  prayers  were  based  on  Old  Testament  au- 
thority; David,  saying  in  Psalm  141  :  2  "The  lift- 
ing up  of  my  hands  as  the  evening  sacrifice,"  means 
vespers,  while  in  the  131st  Psalm  he  is  speaking  of 
compline,  in  the  63d  of  matins.  The  vigil  was 
observed  as  well  as  commanded  by  Christ  himself 
(Luke  6  :  12  and  12  :  37).  The  whole  liturgy  was 
explained  as  being  in  every  detail  a  representation 
of  the  life  of  Christ.  The  sacraments,  too,  were 
prefigured  in  the  Old  Testament.  This  symbolism 
is  very  old  and  very  commonly  used;  it  has  in- 
fluenced Christian  art.  We  see  Noah's  ark  as  a 
symbol  of  baptism  (cf.  I  Peter  3  :  20);  Abel's  sacri- 
fice, and  Melchisedek  offering  bread  and  wine  to 
Abraham,  as  symbols  of  the  holy  eucharist.  Abra- 
ham entertaining  at  his  home  the  three  angels  re- 
veals the  holy  Trinity.  All  this  is  represented  in 
splendid  mosaics  on  the  walls  of  the  churches,  as 
for  instance  in  San  Vitale  at  Ravenna. 

To  us  this  system  of  Biblical  references  for  every- 
thing in  the  Christian  service  seems  strange.    We 


THE  MONASTERY  41 

feel  that  the  worship  of  the  Christian  congregation 
rests  on  other  principles  than  the  ritual  of  the  Old 
Testament  and  does  not  gain  anything  by  such 
hazardous  comparisons.  It  looks  like  comparing 
the  stars  in  heaven  with  beasts  on  earth.  But 
the  fathers  thought  that  this  was  the  highest 
achievement  at  which  they  could  arrive:  to  allego- 
rise and  spiritualise  the  Old  Testament  law  in  order 
to  deduce  from  it  the  Christian  liturgy.  That  was 
what  they  called  worship  in  spirit  and  truth.  It 
is  exactly  opposite  to  the  great  idea  which  Jesus  con- 
veyed in  those  words;  it  is  one  of  the  greatest 
confusions  to  which  the  juxtaposition  of  the  Old 
and  the  New  Testament  in  one  Bible  was  leading. 
Nevertheless,  it  was  of  great  influence  upon  civilisa- 
tion for  centuries. 

The  church  and  the  laity  were  ruled  by  the  Bible; 
but  the  real  Bible  folk  of  this  time  were  the  monks. 
There  had  been  a  tendency  toward  asceticism  from 
the  very  beginning  of  Christianity.  At  the  moment 
when  the  church  came  into  power  this  tendency  in- 
creased rapidly.  In  Egypt  as  well  as  in  Syria,  wher- 
ever there  was  a  desert  place  hermits  gathered  and 
monasteries  were  built.  Now,  in  these  monasteries 
the  life  was  really  filled  with  the  reading  of  the 
Bible.  Even  the  poorest  monk  would  have  a  copy 
of  the  Gospels  to  read.  Some  of  the  monks,  of 


42  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

course,  were  very  simple,  unlearned  people.  They 
could  not  read,  so  they  learned  it  all  by  heart.  And 
sometimes — we  are  told  in  the  legendary  tales  of 
the  monks — it  happened  that  a  monk  who  never 
before  had  learned  to  read  was  miraculously  given 
the  art  of  reading,  God  granting  it  to  him  as  a  rec- 
ompense for  his  zeal.  The  monks  had  their  hours 
for  common  worship  and  reading,  but  they  were 
supposed  to  read  each  by  himself  as  much  as  pos- 
sible. "The  rising  sun  shall  find  the  Bible  in  thy 
hands,"  is  one  of  the  monastic  rules,  and  legend 
illustrates  how  the  divine  grace  recompensed  as- 
siduous reading:  filled  with  heavenly  light  all 
through  the  night  was  the  cell  of  a  hermit  as  long 
as  he  was  reading  the  Bible.  When  visitors  came 
the  talk  was  over  questions  raised  by  the  Bible. 
It  was  with  quotations  from  the  Bible  that  the  cele- 
brated anchorite  entertained  the  people  who  called 
upon  him  to  ask  for  spiritual  help. 

Among  all  Biblical  books  the  Psalter  was  the  one 
most  favoured  by  the  monks.  They  knew  it  by 
heart,  almost  all  of  them,  and  they  used  to  recite 
it  during  their  manual  labour.  The  Psalter  was 
their  spiritual  weapon  against  the  temptations  of 
the  demons;  the  demon  liked  nothing  so  much  as 
to  turn  a  monk  from  reciting  his  Psalter.  But  be- 
sides the  Psalter  it  was  the  Gospel  which  prevailed 


PSALTER  AND  GOSPEL  43 

over  all  other  books  in  these  ascetic  circles.  Many 
of  the  hermits  were  induced  to  leave  the  world  by 
attending  a  Gospel  lesson  in  their  church  at  home. 
"  If  thou  wouldest  be  perfect,  go,  sell  that  thou  hast 
and  give  to  the  poor,  and  thou  shalt  have  treasure 
in  heaven:  and  come  follow  me,"  or  "And  every  one 
that  hath  left  houses  or  brethren  or  sisters  or  father 
or  mother  or  children  or  lands  for  my  name's  sake 
shall  receive  a  hundredfold  and  shall  inherit  eternal 
life."  These  are  the  words  which  occur  again  and 
again  in  the  lives  of  saints  as  the  decisive  ones  for 
their  "conversion,"  that  is  for  leaving  the  world 
and  going  to  the  desert  or  entering  a  monastery. 
The  first  saying  quoted  above  is  referred  to  in  the 
life  of  Saint  Anthony,  the  greatest  of  all  hermits,  and 
Saint  Augustine  had  this  in  his  mind  when  the  time 
came  for  him  to  change  his  life.  The  second  say- 
ing makes  Saint  Hypatius  go  away  from  home;  his 
biographer,  however,  is  honest  enough  to  add  that 
the  saint,  a  youth  of  eighteen,  had  just  received 
punishment  from  his  father.  An  actor  living  luxu- 
riously with  two  concubines  chances  to  enter  a 
church,  and  hears  read  from  the  Gospel,  "Repent 
ye,  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  at  hand";  so  he 
repents  and  becomes  a  monk.  I  do  not  mean  to 
say  that  these  tales  of  the  monks  are  historical  and 
trustworthy  in  every  point,  but  I  venture  to  think 


44  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

that  this  statement  about  the  motives  for  conver- 
sion is,  after  all,  a  correct  one.  The  gospel  is  what 
appeals  to  the  human  heart,  in  all  centuries  and  in 
all  nations.  And  then  the  man  will  try  to  make 
the  gospel  the  rule  of  his  life.  I  think  it  is  remark- 
able that  whereas  the  church  and  the  empire  both 
were  ruled  mainly  by  the  Old  Testament,  these  as- 
cetic circles  took  the  gospel  as  their  main  rule,  that 
is  to  say,  the  gospel  as  understood  by  the  men  of 
that  time.  It  was  to  them  a  new  law,  a  law  of 
asceticism,  of  self-denial,  and  they  kept  to  it  as 
strictly  as  possible.  Even  if  for  other  Christians 
it  meant  an  almost  inaccessible  ideal,  the  monastery 
ought  to  be  the  place  to  fulfil  it  literally. 

Our  picture  would  be  inadequate,  however,  if  we 
should  neglect  the  abuse  of  the  Bible,  the  Bible  show- 
ing its  importance  and  ruling  force  even  by  its  influ- 
ence upon  the  dark  domain  of  human  superstition. 
The  ancient  world  was  full  of  magic.  We  remember 
the  story  in  Acts  19  of  how  Saint  Paul  overcame 
some  Jewish  exorcists,  with  the  result  that  "not 
a  few  of  them  that  practised  curious  arts  brought 
their  books  together  and  burned  them  in  the  sight 
of  all,  and  they  counted  the  price  of  them  and  found 
it  fifty  thousand  pieces  of  silver."  I  suspect  many 
a  scholar  or  librarian  of  to-day  would  like  very  much 
to  have  those  books  among  his  treasures,  but  they 


SUPERSTITION  45 

were  burned;  and  Christianity  scored  its  first  tri- 
umph over  superstition.  Superstition,  however,  did 
not  give  way  at  this  first  defeat;  on  the  contrary, 
it  made  a  strenuous  effort  to  draw  over  all  the  forces 
of  Christendom  to  its  own  side.  There  was  the 
name  of  Jesus,  frightening  the  demons;  black  magic 
took  this  name  and  converted  it  to  its  detestable 
uses.  There  was  the  Gospel,  representative  of  Jesus 
himself  in  his  heavenly  power;  superstition  made  it 
a  vehicle  of  its  own  magical  rites.  There  was  the 
Bible,  the  book  of  divine  oracles;  human  inquisi- 
tiveness  turned  it  into  a  book  from  which  to  read 
the  dark  future.  The  heathen  had  done  this  with 
the  poems  of  Homer  and  Vergil.  Turning  over  the 
pages  they  suddenly  stopped  at  a  verse  and  then 
tried  to  find  in  this  verse  the  answer  to  their  ques- 
tion. The  fathers  of  the  early  church  detested  this 
method  as  something  quite  alien  to  a  Christian  mind, 
but  as  early  as  the  end  of  the  fourth  century  people 
came  to  feel  that  it  was  all  right  if  only  they  used 
the  Bible  for  the  same  purpose.  In  the  sixth  century 
even  church  officials  kept  to  this  practice.  When  a 
bishop  had  to  be  elected  they  almost  always  con- 
sulted the  Psalter  first  on  behalf  of  the  man  to  be 
elected.  Bible  verses  written  on  parchment  were 
attached  to  easy  chairs  in  order  to  keep  away  the 
evil  spirits.  Gospels  in  the  smallest  form  were  hung 


46  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

on  the  necks  of  the  babies.  It  is  astonishing  to 
see  how  great  was  the  esteem  in  which  the  Bible  was 
held  and  how  terribly  contrary  to  the  spirit  of  the 
Bible  this  practice  was,  especially  when  the  Bible  was 
used  to  do  harm.  Lead,  by  its  dull  lustre,  always 
has  reminded  mankind  of  the  realm  of  death;  so  it 
was  used  in  black  magic  for  bringing  upon  an  enemy 
a  curse  from  the  gods  of  the  underworld.  A  rolled 
sheet  of  lead,  inscribed  with  a  psalm  and  a  dreadful 
curse  against  any  robber,  has  been  found  on  one  of 
the  ^Egean  Islands  hidden  in  the  ground  of  a  vine- 
yard. Evidently  the  psalm  was  supposed  to  be  one 
of  the  most  effective  spells.  Even  the  Lord's  Prayer 
and  other  parts  of  the  Gospels  have  been  abused  in 
the  same  way  (Plate  VII).  Nothing  is  so  holy  that 
it  cannot  be  turned  into  a  crime  by  human  sin. 

It  is  a  dark  page  of  human  civilisation.  I  am 
afraid  it  is  a  large  page,  too.  I  could  accumulate 
instance  upon  instance.  But  however  interesting 
this  might  be,  it  would  give  a  wrong  impression. 
The  Bible  was  not  primarily  used  as  a  magical  means 
in  those  centuries.  It  was  acknowledged  as  some- 
thing superhuman,  bearing  supernatural  powers,  and 
therefore  ruling  everything.  It  ruled  the  empire 
as  well  as  the  church.  It  influenced  law,  language, 
art,  habits,  and  even  magic. 


PLATE  VII— THE  LORD'S  PRAYER 

On  a  potsherd  found  at  Megara,  sixth  century;  used  probably 


a  spell. 


From   "Mitteilungen   des   K.    Deutschen    Archaeologischen    Instituts,"    Athen. 
Published  by  G.  Reimer,  Berlin. 


Ill 

THE  BIBLE  TEACHES  THE  GERMAN  NATIONS 
(500-800  A.  D.) 

FROM  the  fourth  century  on  the  Germans,  tribe  by 
tribe,  crossed  the  Danube  and  the  Rhine  and  en- 
tered the  boundaries  of  the  Roman  empire.  Here 
part  of  them  settled  near  the  frontier,  part  took 
service  in  the  Roman  army.  But  the  more  numer- 
ous they  became,  the  more  hostile  they  were.  At 
last  the  Roman  empire  in  the  West  broke  down, 
German  kingdoms  taking  its  place.  It  is  a  long  and 
cruel  history,  this  period  of  "  Volkerwanderungen  " 
as  it  is  usually  called  in  German,  the  period  of  the 
great  migrations.  And  only  after  some  centuries 
did  the  new  Roman  empire  of  German  nationality 
come  to  be  established  by  Charlemagne. 

At  first  the  Germans  made  a  brilliant  start  in 
taking  over  Roman  civilisation.  The  Goths  had 
been  Christianised  and  civilised  at  an  early  period. 
While  it  is  true  that  the  Visigoths  under  Alaric  cap- 
tured Rome  and  did  not  refrain  from  plundering  it, 
the  behaviour  of  the  Vandals  under  Gaiseric  was 
even  worse,  so  that  for  all  time  to  come  their  name 

47 


48  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

is  connected  with  the  most  brutal  pillage.  But  the 
noble  tribe  of  the  Ostrogoths  under  their  celebrated 
king  Theodoric — called  Dietrich  von  Bern  in  the 
German  songs — tried  another  plan;  they  adopted 
Roman  civilisation  as  far  as  possible  and  endeav- 
oured to  combine  both  nations  under  one  dominion. 
Theodoric  had  as  his  minister  or  secretary  of  state 
a  member  of  the  Roman  nobility,  the  most  cul- 
tivated man  of  letters  of  the  time,  Cassiodorus.  We 
have  his  collection  of  reports  and  letters,  and  we  may 
infer  from  them  how  much,  aside  from  his  training  in 
the  Roman  law  school,  he  was  influenced  by  his 
Christian  belief  and  Biblical  reading.  Later  on, 
when  he  retired  into  the  monastery  which  he  had 
founded  on  his  estates  at  Vivarium,  all  his  devotion 
was  given  to  the  study  of  the  Bible.  He  is  the  man 
who  inculcated  on  Western  monasticism  that  love  for 
scholarship  which  has  been  ever  since  a  characteris- 
tic of  the  Order  of  Saint  Benedict.  Cassiodorus  was 
a  Roman,  of  course,  but  we  have  ample  evidence 
that  even  among  the  Goths  the  Bible  was  read  and 
studied.  There  was  a  Gothic  translation  of  the 
Bible,  which  is  supposed  to  have  been  made  in  the 
fourth  century  by  Ulfilas.  In  order  not  to  encourage 
the  warlike  spirit  in  his  people  he  is  said  to  have 
omitted  the  books  of  the  Kings,  wherein  so  many 
wars  and  battles  are  described.  The  educational 


THE  OSTROGOTHS  49 

aspect  of  the  Bible  as  teaching  the  German  nations 
comes  out  here  distinctly.  We  are  able  to  trace 
the  history  of  the  Goths  by  their  Bible,  which,  hav- 
ing been  translated  in  the  East  from  Greek  manu- 
scripts, shows  traces  of  a  Latin  influence,  evidently 
introduced  when  the  Goths  settled  in  Italy.  There 
still  exist  some  copies,  among  them  the  famous  Codex 
Argenteus,  now  at  Upsala,  which  in  its  silver  writing 
on  purple  ground,  is  a  wonderful  specimen  of  lux- 
urious calligraphy,  giving  testimony  to  the  degree  of 
civilisation  which  these  Ostrogoths  had  taken  over 
from  Rome  (Plate  VIII). 

There  was,  however,  one  great  difference  between 
the  Germans  and  the  Romans;  the  latter  were  Cath- 
olics, the  former  Arians.  This  religious  difference  is 
responsible  for  many  troubles  and  persecutions 
brought  by  the  Germans  upon  the  population  of  the 
conquered  land.  The  Germans  had  a  church  organ- 
isation of  their  own;  they  had  their  own  clergy,  and 
this  clergy  was  well  trained  in  Bible  reading.  We 
find  the  remarkable  fact  that  the  German  Arian 
bishops  show  an  even  larger  knowledge  of  the  Bible 
than  their  Roman  Catholic  colleagues.  The  com- 
plaint was  often  heard  that  the  watchwords  of  Ca- 
tholicism, as,  for  example,  homousios,  had  no  Biblical 
foundation,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Arians 
were  always  ready  to  fill  their  creeds  with  Biblical 


50  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

phrases.  These  Germans  had  a  profound  reverence 
for  the  holy  Scripture  and  bowed  down  to  it.  It 
was  only  by  Scriptural  proofs  that  the  Catholic 
clergy  of  Spain  succeeded  in  converting  the  Arian 
king  to  their  faith. 

Theodoric  built  at  Ravenna  some  churches  which 
still  exist.  Here  we  see  mosaics  exhibiting  the  life 
of  Jesus  in  a  very  simple  way,  but  with  that  un- 
mistakable touch  of  awe  which  is  so  characteristic 
of  German  piety.  How  different  are  the  pictures 
which  were  added  after  Ravenna  had  become  By- 
zantine! They  are  highly  ceremonial,  representing, 
among  others,  the  emperor  Justinian  and  the  em- 
press Theodora  with  all  their  suite. 

These  were  the  first  centuries  of  German  invasion. 
The  ancient  civilisation,  championed  by  the  Roman 
church,  was  still  strong  enough  to  impose  itself  upon 
these  invaders.  Time  went  on  and  civilisation  more 
and  more  lost  its  energy.  Especially  in  Gaul,  in 
the  kingdom  of  the  Merovingians,  intellectual  dark- 
ness spread  all  over  the  country.  There  was  no 
layman  who  could  read,  hardly  any  member  of  the 
clergy.  We  hear  of  great  monasteries,  which  were 
rich  royal  foundations,  where  no  complete  Bible  was 
to  be  found.  We  see  the  troubles  of  a  missionary 
like  Boniface.  In  order  to  procure  the  necessary 
books,  he  has  to  apply  to  his  English  lady  friends, 


PLATE  VIII— GOTHIC  BIBLE 

Codex  Argenteus,  now  at  Upsala.  Sixth  century,  written  on  purple  parchment  in 
silver  and  (some  words)  in  gold.  The  figures  at  the  bottom  give  Eusebius's 
harmony  of  the  Gospels:  this  particular  scheme  is  found  in  Syrian  manu- 
scripts and  in  the  Old  Latin  Codex  Rehdigerianus  at  Breslau. 


From   "Deutsche   Kulturgeschichte,"   by  O.   Henne   am   Rhyn. 
Germany. 


Grote,   Berlin, 


THE  MEROVINGIAN  PERIOD  51 

who  send  him  copies  of  the  books  he  wants,  finely 
written  by  their  own  delicate  hands.  It  was  a  time 
when  a  book,  a  Bible,  was  a  treasure,  and  to  own 
one  was  a  fact  to  be  recorded  by  a  biographer. 
This  enables  us  to  trace  the  history  of  more  than 
one  famous  manuscript.  We  are  surprised  to  find 
what  journeys  they  made.  One  was  sent  from 
Naples  to  England,  and  then  a  century  later  again 
removed  to  the  German  shore  and  finally  treasured 
among  the  rarities  of  the  Fulda  library.  Another 
manuscript,  now  at  Florence,  came  originally  from 
the  monastery  of  Cassiodorus  in  the  extreme  south 
of  Italy  and  found  its  way  to  the  monastery  of 
Mount  Amiata,  near  Florence,  only  by  a  round- 
about route  through  the  famous  English  monaster- 
ies, where  it  was  copied.  The  few  scholars  of  that 
period  had  to  go  a  long  way  before  they  could  get 
a  copy  of  the  Bible  worth  their  attention,  and  they 
had  to  go  a  long  way  to  find  a  monastery  with 
hands  able  to  copy  manuscripts. 

A  new  epoch  begins  with  Charlemagne,  who  has 
a  real  right  to  the  name  of  the  Great.  If  one  wants 
to  know  a  great  man,  one  has  only  to  see  what  atten- 
tion he  pays  to  minor  things.  It  is  simply  wonder- 
ful how  this  German  king,  who  restored  the  old 
notion  of  the  Roman  empire,  whose  dominion  con- 
tained France,  Germany,  Spain,  Italy,  was  taking 


52  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

care  of  the  schoolboys  and  fixing  his  eyes  on  the 
way  in  which  the  Bible  was  being  copied  in  the 
monasteries  of  his  vast  realm.  In  one  of  his  ordi- 
nances he  complains  that  they  use  unskilled  boys 
for  copying  the  most  sacred  book.  It  needs,  he 
says,  grammar — nay,  good  grammar — to  understand 
what  you  are  copying.  It  is  no  religion  to  pray  to 
God  in  ungrammatical  language  and  to  have  his 
holy  Scriptures  in  a  grammatically  incorrect  text. 
From  the  fact  that  the  monasteries  in  their  letters 
of  application  used  a  bad  style  he  infers  that  Bible 
reading  here  was  being  neglected.  Therefore,  Char- 
lemagne tried,  in  the  first  place,  to  bring  the  schools 
of  his  kingdom  to  a  higher  standard.  Each  mon- 
astery had  to  have  a  well-conducted  school  for  the 
monks  and  for  the  young  people  who  were  sent  there 
for  education  (as  they  are  now  sent  to  public  schools). 
At  his  own  court  he  had  the  Schola  palatina  and 
the  great  emperor  himself  went  there  often  and  took 
lessons  together  with  the  boys.  But  he  did  not  stop 
here.  His  intention  was  to  secure  a  really  good, 
trustworthy  text  of  the  Bible.  He  therefore  invited 
scholars  from  everywhere;  even  some  Orientals  are 
said  to  have  shared  in  the  work.  The  leading  man, 
the  chairman  of  the  Committee  for  the  revision  of 
the  Bible,  as  we  should  say  at  present,  was  Alcuin, 
a  monk  from  England,  who  by  his  great  learning 


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PLATE  IX— ALCUIN'S  BIBLE 
(Brit.  Mus.  add.  10546) 

Written  at  Tours,  soon  after  Alcuin's  death:  a  very  good  example  of  fine  Caro- 

lingian  minuscule.     The  lines  are  of  equal  length. 

From  F.  G.  Kenyon,  "Fac-similes  of  Biblical  Manuscripts."     By  permission  of 
the  Trustees  of  the  British  Museum. 


BIBLE  REVISION  53 

had  won  the  confidence  of  Charlemagne  and  was 
appointed  by  him  abbot  of  the  famous  monastery 
of  Tours.  Here,  at  the  school  of  Tours,  most  of 
the  work  of  revision  was  done  (Plate  IX) ;  through 
Alcuin's  influence  the  revision  was  mainly  based  on 
the  text  current  in  England.  That  this  was  the 
best  text  available  at  that  time  is  now  generally 
acknowledged  by  all  competent  scholars.  This  was 
not  so  in  Charlemagne's  time;  other  scholars,  Frank- 
ish  bishops,  disapproved  of  Alcuin's  work.  They 
thought  the  revision  would  have  come  out  much 
better  if  conducted  according  to  the  text  prevailing 
in  Spain.  So  Theodulf,  bishop  of  Orleans,  issued 
a  version  of  his  own  (Plate  X).  It  is  always  in- 
structive to  see  how  men  were  the  same  in  former 
times  as  they  are  now:  scholars  seldom  agree  one 
with  another.  The  result  was  that  henceforth  two 
forms  of  the  Latin  Bible  were  used  through  the 
next  centuries — in  the  North,  Alcuin's  revision,  in 
the  South,  the  revision  made  by  Theodulf. 

Charlemagne  would  not  have  cared  so  much  for 
the  text  of  the  Bible  had  he  not  esteemed  the  Bible 
to  be  the  one  great  text-book  for  his  people.  He 
himself  was  filled  with  Biblical  notions.  In  his  pri- 
vate circle,  a  club  for  promoting  classical  reading, 
he  was  called  David.  And  it  was,  indeed,  the  Old 
Testament  idea  of  the  theocratic  king  which  gov- 


54  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

erned  his  mind.  The  king  chosen  by  God  and 
elected  by  the  people,  the  king  a  representative  of 
God  and  the  head  of  the  people,  the  king  a  valiant 
warrior  and  a  royal  psalmist  at  the  same  time,  this 
was  his  ideal,  in  which  old  German  notions  were 
combined  with  Old  Testament  views.  While  re- 
vering the  priest,  he  always  felt  himself  superior 
even  to  the  bishop  of  Rome.  He  willingly  accepted 
the  role  of  a  defender,  of  a  protector;  he  never  would 
have  accepted  his  crown  from  the  hand  of  a  priest. 
Nothing  is  so  alien  to  Charlemagne  as  the  later 
mediaeval  theory  of  the  two  swords,  both  given  by 
God  to  Saint  Peter,  the  one  spiritual,  kept  by  him- 
self and  his  successors,  the  other  worldly,  given  by 
them  to  the  emperor.  No,  he  had  his  sword  from 
God  directly,  and  his  royalty  included  the  power  and 
the  duty  of  looking  after  the  church's  affairs  as  well. 
The  Bible  tells  of  a  king  of  Judah,  called  Josiah,who, 
on  being  informed  that  the  book  of  the  Law  given 
by  Moses  and  hidden  for  a  long  time  had  been  re- 
discovered, forthwith  ordered  everything  to  be  re- 
formed and  restored  according  to  this  law.  That 
served  as  the  model  for  Charlemagne's  own  eccle- 
siastical work.  Being  the  king,  he  felt  responsible 
for  the  purity  of  worship  and  of  doctrine.  There- 
fore, when  the  question  arose  in  the  East  if  wor- 
ship was  due  to  the  pictures  of  Christ  and  the  saints, 


PLATE  X— THEODULF'S   BIBLE 
(Brit.  Mus.  add.  24142) 

Written  in  three  columns  like  many  Spanish  manuscripts,  and  in  lines  of  various 

length,  "cata  cola  et  commata,"  as  St.  Jerome  says. 

From  "Fac-similes  of  Biblical  Manuscripts."     By  permission  of  the  Trustees  of 
the  British  Museum. 


CHARLEMAGNE  55 

and  the  bishop  of  Rome  did  not  please  him  in  his 
answer,  Charlemagne  himself,  assisted  by  Alcuin  and 
other  theologians  of  his  staff,  wrote  a  treatise  on  the 
subject,  which  he  himself  thought  to  be  decisive, 
the  so-called  Libri  Carolini,  a  document  of  a  rather 
Puritan  character,  showing  the  austere  spirit  of 
early  Western  theology.  When  in  Spain  a  discus- 
sion began  about  the  divine  nature  of  Christ,  he 
again  interfered,  sending  his  theologians  to  discuss 
the  matter  according  to  the  true  teaching  of  the 
Bible — as  is  said  expressly  in  their  instructions — and 
after  they  had  decided  he  even  took  political  mea- 
sures against  those  whom  he  believed  to  be  heretics. 
We  can  scarcely  understand  his  attitude  in  those 
cases  without  keeping  in  mind  that  he  felt  himself 
a  new  David  and  a  new  Josiah. 

Sometimes  it  is  a  true  evangelical  spirit  which  per- 
vades his  ordinances  for  the  church.  In  a  proclama- 
tion of  811  he  says:  "We  will  ask  the  clergy  them- 
selves, those  who  are  not  only  to  read  the  holy 
Scriptures  by  themselves  but  are  to  teach  them  to 
others  also :  who  are  those  to  whom  the  apostle  says, 
Be  my  imitators?  or  who  is  the  man  of  whom  he  says, 
No  soldier  on  service  entangleth  himself  with  the  af- 
fairs of  this  life? — or  how  to  imitate  the  apostle  and 
how  to  do  service  to  God?  What  is  it  to  leave  the 
world?  does  it  mean  simply  not  to  wear  weapons  and 


56  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

not  to  be  married  publicly?  does  it  mean  to  enlarge 
one's  property  daily,  oppress  the  poor  and  induce 
men  to  perjury?"  Charlemagne  is  particularly 
strict  about  avoiding  perjury,  not  only  in  the  solemn 
form  of  public  oath,  which  is  taken  on  the  holy  Gos- 
pel or  on  the  altar  or  on  the  relics  of  the  saints,  but 
in  common  conversation  as  well.  He  tries  to  intro- 
duce Matt.  5  :  16,  "Even  so  let  your  light  shine 
before  men  that  they  may  see  your  good  works  and 
glorify  your  father  which  is  in  heaven,"  as  the  motto 
for  every  Christian's  life.  That  is  quite  evangelical. 
But  it  is  from  the  Old  Testament  that  the  tenor  of 
his  laws  comes.  They  all  have  a  strong  mark  of  se- 
verity, in  particular  the  so-called  Saxon  laws,  which 
were  imposed  upon  the  Saxon  tribes  when  after  a 
very  hard  resistance  they  were  finally  defeated  and 
subdued.  Through  this  law  runs,  like  a  bloody 
thread,  the  frightful  menace:  morte  moriatur,  by 
death  shall  he  die.  This  sounds  harsh,  but  it  is  noth- 
ing else  than  the  adaptation  of  a  well-known  Bib- 
lical phrase  (Ex.  19  : 12;  21  : 12:  "He  shall  surely 
be  put  to  death/'  R.  V.).  That  is  an  example  of 
Biblical  phraseology.  But  the  Bible  influenced  the 
legislation  of  Charlemagne  also  in  content.  I  choose 
three  instances:  in  all  three  cases  the  work  of  Charle- 
magne was  prepared  for  by  church  councils.  Chris- 
tianity had  begun  by  voluntarily  adopting  Old 


STATE  LAW  57 

Testament  laws;  then  the  church  had  made  their 
observance  compulsory;  now  Charlemagne  gives  to 
the  ecclesiastical  ordinances  the  sanction  of  the  state 
and  inflicts  penalty  upon  trespassers.  The  first  in- 
stance is  Sunday;  it  was  called  the  Lord's  Day; 
from  the  sixth  century  synods  and  councils  had  tried 
to  make  the  people  keep  this  day  in  a  more  solemn 
fashion.  They  did  not  refer  to  the  Old  Testament 
commandment  at  first;  they  did  not  even  demand 
that  all  manual  work  should  be  stopped.  The  fre- 
quent repetition  of  the  decree  seems  to  prove  that 
it  was  rather  unsuccessful  even  in  this  limited  form. 
Now  the  government  interferes,  and  its  injunctions 
secure  at  once  to  the  Lord's  Day  the  strictest  obser- 
vance. It  is  remarkable  that  Charlemagne  expressly 
refers  to  the  Old  Testament  commandment.  It  is 
according  to  the  Bible  that  the  day  was  counted 
from  sunset  to  sunset.  This  is  the  beginning  of  the 
Sabbatarian  question  in  the  West,  the  East  preced- 
ing the  West,  as  we  have  seen,  by  about  two  cen- 
turies. 

Our  second  instance  is  the  tithe;  it  was  to  be 
paid,  according  to  the  Bible,  by  all  the  other  tribes 
to  the  tribe  of  Levi,  who  served  at  the  temple.  Now 
Christians  began  to  pay  voluntarily  a  tithe  to  their 
priests,  accommodating  themselves  to  the  Old  Testa- 
ment rule;  but  by  and  by  the  clergy  derived  from 


58  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

the  Old  Testament  a  right  of  asking  for  the  tithe. 
The  farmer  had  to  pay  his  tithe  to  his  parish  priest. 
Charlemagne  proclaimed  this  as  a  law  of  his  king- 
dom, referring  expressly  to  God's  commandments. 

The  third  instance  is  given  in  the  prohibition 
against  taking  interest.  It  is  said  in  Deut.  23  :  19: 
"Thou  shalt  not  lend  upon  usury  to  thy  brother." 
Ecclesiastical  authorities  took  this  as  forbidding  to 
take  any  interest  in  lending  money,  and  they  tried 
to  impress  this  prohibition  upon  the  minds  of  the 
Christian  people.  Here,  again,  Charlemagne  gave 
his  sanction  to  this  ecclesiastical  view  and  made  the 
prohibition  against  taking  interest  a  part  of  the  pub- 
lic law.  It  is  obvious  that  the  economic  life  of  the 
nation  was  deeply  influenced  by  this  compulsory 
adoption  of  Old  Testament  laws. 

Justice,  with  the  Germans,  was  to  a  large  extent 
exercised  by  means  of  the  ordeals.  We  scarcely 
realise  the  importance  these  proceedings  had  at  that 
time.  People  believed  in  a  divine  power  bringing 
out  guilt  and  innocence  by  means  of  these  curious 
trials.  It  was  but  natural  that  the  Bible,  represent- 
ing the  divine  oracles,  should  be  present  at  the  cere- 
mony, that  both  parties  should  revere  and  kiss  it. 
But  people  did  more;  they  made  the  Bible  itself  a 
means  of  deciding  between  guilty  and  innocent. 
They  had  a  particular  kind  of  ordeal  which  they 


BIBLE  STUDIES  59 

called  determining  by  means  of  the  Gospels,  and 
another  which  was  called  the  ordeal  of  the  Psalter, 
a  copy  of  the  Psalter  being  swung  over  the  head  of 
the  suspected  person. 

I  have  referred  to  the  palace  school.  This  had 
its  continuation  in  a  graduate  school,  if  we  may  so 
call  a  Bible  circle  among  the  theologians  attending 
the  court.  These  theologians,  headed  by  Alcuin 
himself,  were  first-rate  Bible  scholars.  They  knew 
great  parts  of  the  Bible  by  heart;  they  had  read  all 
accessible  commentaries  of  the  fathers.  They  had 
ideas  of  their  own,  too,  but  they  were  traditional- 
ists to  such  an  extent  that  they  would  not  say  any- 
thing of  their  own  unless  it  was  said  and  supported 
by  the  fathers.  When  asked  to  write  brief  com- 
mentaries on  Biblical  books,  because  the  patristic 
commentaries  were  too  large  and  comprehensive  for 
the  students  of  this  time,  they  simply  gave  extracts 
from  the  fathers  and  carefully  avoided  adding  any- 
thing of  their  own.  One  went  so  far  as  to  take 
even  the  connecting  words  from  the  works  of  Saint 
Augustine;  another,  whose  mental  energy  was  too 
strong  to  keep  him  within  the  boundaries  of  pure 
traditionalism,  excuses  himself  whenever  he  intro- 
duces an  interpretation  of  his  own. 

In  these  studies  the  ladies  and  gentlemen  of  the 
court  took  part.  It  is  very  interesting  and  often 


60  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

amusing  to  see  what  kind  of  questions  they  bring 
before  Alcuin  as  the  great  oracle  of  learning.  One 
lady  reading  her  Psalter  was  puzzled  by  the  words 
in  Psalm  116,  "All  men  are  liars."  How  can  babies 
be  liars  before  they  begin  to  speak,  or  dumb  men? 
"The  sun  shall  not  smite  thee  by  day  nor  the  moon 
by  night"  (Psalm  121:6)  seemed  to  be  incompat- 
ible with  the  fact  that  the  moon  never  burns.  A 
scholar  who  had  come  from  Greece  troubled  the 
court  by  putting  the  question:  To  whom  was  paid 
the  price  with  which  we  were  bought  according 
to  I  Cor.  6:20;  7:23.  Charlemagne  himself  has 
other  questions.  He  is  troubled  by  finding  that  the 
hymn  sung  by  Christ  and  his  disciples  after  the  Last 
Supper  has  not  been  recorded  by  any  of  the  Gospels. 
I  wonder  if  he  really  was  satisfied  by  Alcuin's  answer. 
After  a  very  learned  explanation  of  the  term  hymn, 
Alcuin  gives,  first,  three  views  of  different  inter- 
preters: (1)  That  there  was  no  special  hymn,  only 
a  general  praisegiving;  (2)  that  they  had  sung  the 
twenty-second  Psalm;  (3)  that  it  was  some  Jewish 
prayer.  Then  he  proceeds  to  establish  his  own 
solution:  that  it  is,  in  fact,  the  prayer  of  Jesus,  re- 
corded in  John  17,  which  was  meant  by  the  word 
hymn  here.  Incidentally,  he  makes  some  important 
remarks  upon  the  harmony  of  the  Gospels:  "Al- 
though we  see  in  the  Gospels  some  things  told  simi- 


ALCUIN  THE  BIBLE  SCHOLAR  61 

larly,  others  in  a  different  way,  we  nevertheless 
believe  that  everything  is  true."  That  was  the 
leading  idea  for  the  criticism  of  the  fathers,  and  it 
was  the  same  for  nearly  all  the  mediaeval  centuries. 
Historical  criticism,  directed  upon  the  Gospels, 
would  have  seemed  to  show  intolerable  lack  of 
piety  or  certain  evidence  of  heretical  views. 

Theological  thinking  does  not  go  beyond  the  lim- 
its of  Biblical  doctrine.  Scarcely  one  or  two  men 
dare  to  think  in  their  own  way  or  speculate  on 
such  problems  as  darkness  and  nothing  (that  is, 
what  was  before  the  creation)  or  on  the  nature  of 
miracle.  There  was  hardly  any  attempt  at  scien- 
tific theories.  And  the  best  men,  indeed,  as,  for 
instance,  Alcuin,  were  proud  of  basing  their  theology 
entirely  on  Biblical  ideas. 

The  one  great  event  in  the  expansion  of  Chris- 
tianity among  the  German  nations  is  the  mission  of 
Saint  Augustine  to  England.  When  Pope  Gregory 
found  some  Anglo-Saxon  youths  at  the  slave  market 
of  Rome  and  perceived  that  in  the  North  there 
was  still  a  pagan  nation  to  be  baptised,  he  sent  one 
of  his  monks  to  England,  and  this  monk,  who  was 
Saint  Augustine,  took  with  him  the  Bible  and  intro- 
duced it  to  the  Anglo-Saxons,  and  one  of  his  fol- 
lowers brought  with  him  from  Rome  pictures  show- 


62  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

ing  the  Biblical  history,  and  decorated  the  walls  of 
the  church  in  the  monastery  of  Wearmouth.  We 
do  not  enter  here  into  the  difficult  question  of  the 
relations  between  this  newly  founded  Anglo-Saxon 
church  and  the  old  Iro-Scottish  church.  Differences 
of  Bible  text  had  something  to  do  with  the  pitiful 
struggles  which  arose  between  the  churches  and 
ended  in  the  devastation  of  the  older  one.  The  one 
point  which  interests  us  here  is  the  fact  that  both 
Iro-Scottish  and  Anglo-Saxon  monks  were  driven 
into  missionary  work  by  the  Bible.  When,  in  the 
service,  they  heard  read  from  the  Old  Testament  or 
from  the  epistle  to  the  Hebrews  that  Abraham  and 
the  patriarchs  had  all  left  their  home,  their  parents, 
their  native  country,  and  had  gone  to  a  foreign  land 
which  they  did  not  know,  simply  in  order  to  please 
God,  then  they  felt  bound  to  do  the  same.  When  at 
the  mass  the  Gospel  was  read,  'And  every  one  that 
hath  left  houses  or  brethren  or  sisters  or  father  or 
mother  or  children  or  lands  for  my  name's  sake, 
shall  receive  a  hundredfold  and  shall  inherit  eternal 
life,"  then  they  hurried  away,  not  knowing  where 
to  go,  looking  only  for  a  far-distant  and  desert  place. 
It  was  this  ascetic  view  of  the  Bible  which  drove 
the  Iro-Scottish  monks  over  the  sea  to  France,  Italy, 
Germany,  which  made  them  preach  the  gospel  to 
the  Germans  who  had  not  yet  heard  of  it.  It  was 


ENGLAND  AND  GERMANY  63 

this  same  motive  which  caused  Willibrord  and 
Boniface  to  cross  the  North  Sea  and  come  to  preach 
among  the  Frisians  and  Saxons.  Boniface  is  said 
to  have  received  the  deadly  stroke  from  a  pagan 
while  holding  his  Bible  over  his  head.  They  still 
show  the  copy  at  Fulda. 

Again,  it  was  the  Bible  which  determined  Charle- 
magne to  use  force  against  the  Saxons  in  order  to 
bring  them  to  baptism  and  Christian  faith.  Saint 
Augustine  had  discovered  the  passage  in  the  Lord's 
parable  of  the  great  supper,  where  the  servant  is 
told  to  go  out  into  the  highways  and  hedges  and 
"constrain"  them  to  come  in.  This  coge  intrare, 
he  explained,  might  excuse  the  using  of  secular  power 
for  the  purpose  of  bringing  heretics  back  to  the 
church  or  of  causing  pagans  to  join  the  church. 
Charlemagne  knew  no  better  than  to  suppose  that 
this  was  the  true  meaning  of  the  saying  of  our  Lord, 
and  so  he  felt  in  conscience  bound  to  use  military 
force  and  the  full  strength  of  the  law  in  christianis- 
ing the  Saxons. 

But  it  was  the  Bible  itself  and  not  Charlemagne's 
sharp  sword  and  his  cruel  law  which  brought  over 
the  wild  Saxon  tribes  into  Christendom.  They  had 
among  themselves  a  poet  who  had  the  gift  of  sing- 
ing the  gospel  into  their  hearts.  Charlemagne  him- 
self was  fond  of  the  national  songs;  he  loved  his 


64  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

German  language  as  much  as  he  esteemed  Latin. 
He  was  convinced  that  a  man  ought  to  pray  to  God 
in  his  native  tongue.  There  are  not  only  three  sa- 
cred languages,  he  says,  in  which  to  pray  and  to 
praise  God — Hebrew,  Greek,  Latin — you  may  praise 
him  in  your  German  as  well.  Therefore  he  ar- 
ranged that  a  priest  should  translate  the  Biblical 
lessons  and  the  sermon  to  the  people  who  did  not 
understand  Latin.  He  would  probably  have  ap- 
proved a  German  translation  of  the  Bible;  but  the 
clergy  were  not  prepared  to  do  this.  They  took 
Latin  as  the  basis  of  civilisation,  and  only  a  few 
of  them  had  any  regard  for  the  uncultivated  people. 
There  are  preserved  some  few  attempts  at  translating 
parts  of  the  Bible  into  German;  they  attest  what 
might  have  come  out  of  this  Carolingian  movement 
if  the  bigotry  and  narrowness  of  Charlemagne's  son 
Louis  had  not  stopped  it.  Among  the  Saxons  a 
fresh  and  vigorous  spirit  was  still  alive.  Having 
been  introduced  to  Christianity  by  brute  force  of 
war,  they  embraced  the  gospel,  trying  to  make  it 
their  own  by  putting  it  into  the  form  of  their  na- 
tional song.  We  do  not  know  the  name  of  the  poet; 
he  seems  to  have  been  a  clergyman,  instructed  in 
the  best  commentaries  of  his  time,  such  as  were 
available  at  the  monastery  of  Fulda.  For  the 
framework  he  used  a  Gospel  harmony  which  is  con- 


THE  "HELIAND"  65 

tained  in  the  famous  Codex  Fuldensis  of  the  Vulgate, 
originating  at  Capua  (in  south  Italy)  and  brought 
probably  by  Boniface  himself  from  England  to 
Fulda.  This  Gospel  harmony  he  translated  freely 
into  some  six  thousand  Saxon  verses.  His  poem  is 
one  of  the  finest  assimilations  of  the  Gospel  history 
to  national  German  feeling,  to  be  compared  only 
with  Diirer's  engravings  and  Eduard  von  Geb- 
hardt's  paintings.  Christ  is  the  heavenly  king;  the 
apostles  are  his  loyal  kinsmen;  he  wanders  with 
them  through  the  Saxon  wood;  he  stops  at  a  native 
spring;  all  Oriental  character  has  gone,  but  the 
gospel  has  lost  nothing.  It  is  as  fresh  and  as  real 
as  it  ever  had  been.  The  fact  our  author  detests 
most  is  Christ's  betrayal  by  one  of  his  own  men; 
nothing  is  so  bad  as  this  according  to  the  German 
mind.  Christ  on  the  cross  is  not  suffering;  he  dies 
as  a  victorious  warrior.  When  he  says,  "  I  thirst," 
he  expresses  by  this  the  fact  that  he  is  thirsting 
after  the  souls  of  men,  to  bring  them  into  paradise. 
It  is  wonderful  how  the  gospel  has  penetrated  the 
German  soul  in  order  to  produce  a  harmony  like 
this. 

This  "Heliand"  by  the  anonymous  Saxon  poet 
we  shall  admire  even  more  if  we  compare  it  with  the 
other  attempt  at  bringing  the  life  of  Christ  into 
German  poesy.  It  is  by  Otfried  of  Strassburg,  whose 


66  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

"Christ"  is  a  very  learned  elaboration,  partly  in 
German,  partly  in  Latin,  therefore  undoubtedly 
much  preferred  in  the  literary  circles  of  that  time, 
but  infinitely  inferior  to  the  "  Heliand "  in  freshness 
and  popular  quality. 

It  is  remarkable  that  there  is  something  sim- 
ilar to  the  "Heliand"  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  poem, 
the  "Genesis."  The  theory  has  been  successfully 
started  and  proved  by  later  discoveries  that  both 
have  the  same  origin.  The  Saxons  of  Germany  and 
the  Saxons  of  England  were  not  so  far  away  one 
from  the  other  that  they  could  not  have  intercourse 
and  exchange  (Plate  XI). 

However  this  may  be,  it  is  evident  that  the  Bible 
had  an  influence  in  teaching  the  German  nations 
from  the  beginning,  and  that  the  new  civilisation 
which  was  to  be  built  would  have  the  Bible  as  one 
of  its  foundations. 


:crpiv/  vxitrtrm 

^» 


poucxnm  sed  conpus  dui 


airrmccarm  ttrrao  euange 
Zjca&pnajedicanomiB  os 
temJener  ut^jtn  haecte^iT 
enan  Sanercmtinticnmccotiri^ 

yutlpWr  m  ^WtH*-  i  V*«i^»*l«r  t  e  r>-^  #*.**-     t: 

nidub  QaHb  adueuieiras 
hoDOToxculuTTi  de6cner  • 


no  Scrim  one  disapnlu  s 
Sarrodcmmn  tinstaahei 
amis  secaudnmcccruitJ 

-****  f*ttffn  „     j^^a 


uaas  qnot)  moausouctu 

Urti_^  «»MM.**- 

pciutTOCRccinnuaenmar 


^DQi^po^rgijimiraTtaZici    .  opnsTutuouisa&a^Kmno 

cr4JT     -^»H  '"***  •r.w.r     v.i>P.  PT      .^^nt, 

&craosio  u^aroemrueo  auipTuifdtcanctlTTMupo 


cons  wo«ieL6cn«itntrD 
Hajn  ennuis  Qnamraora 

^*»t«*r«*     „&„      .f 


mTirapmiTnis  pcposraope 
descnn  leinminn  umnenj 

c-nnun,:  K*fc  1^     f    y^ 

•ccrrnxmoaand^ccbobaiii 


mrrufCnnaw 


PLATE  XI— LINDISFARNE   GOSPELS 
(Brit.  Mus.  Cotton:  Nero  D  IV.) 

Written  about  690  in  honour  of  St.  Cuthbert  (f687),  in  English  round  style. 
The  interlinear  version  was  added  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  later — remark 
in  the  midst  of  the  left-hand  column  the  words:  xpi  (=Christi)  evangelium 
with  Cristes  godspell  above  it. 

From  "Fac-similes  of  Biblical  Manuscripts."  By  permission  of  the  Trustees  of 
the  British  Museum. 


IV 

THE  BIBLE  BECOMES  ONE  BASIS  OF  MEDLEVAL 
CIVILISATION   (800-1150  A.  D.) 

THE  Middle  Ages,  the  dark  Middle  Ages,  that  is 
what  we  are  wont  to  call  the  period  we  now  enter 
in  our  journey  through  the  centuries.  Scholars  of 
the  sixteenth  century  called  it  so,  when  they  looked 
back  to  the  classical  period,  from  which  they  drew 
all  their  light  and  inspiration.  The  centuries  be- 
tween counted  for  nothing;  they  seemed  to  be  bar- 
barous, uneducated;  the  humanistic  scholar  would 
simply  drop  them  out  of  the  world's  history.  Time 
passed  and  men  became  enthusiastic  about  the 
beauties  of  these  Middle  Ages.  At  the  beginning 
of  the  nineteenth  century  Europe  was  enchanted  by 
romanticism.  Nothing  was  fashionable  that  was 
not  mediaeval  in  art,  customs,  manners.  At  pres- 
ent we  view  these  centuries  more  calmly  in  the 
light  of  their  own  time;  we  see  what  was  their 
defect,  and  we  see  at  the  same  time  what  was  their 
merit.  It  is  true  that  civilisation  had  only  begun 
to  recover  from  the  shock  which  the  great  migra- 
tions had  given  to  it.  If  a  chronicler  thinks  it  worth 

67 


68  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

while  to  mention  that  the  emperor  Henry  IV  was 
able  to  read  to  himself  the  petitions  brought  before 
him,  we  must  infer  that  the  art  of  reading  was  not 
wide-spread,  even  among  the  nobility.  And  the 
famous  poet  Wolfram  von  Eschenbach  tells  us  him- 
self that  he  was  no  friend  of  this  art.  On  the  other 
hand,  I  need  only  remind  my  readers  of  the  beau- 
tiful buildings  we  still  admire  at  Cologne:  the 
massive  old  church  of  Saint  Gereon  in  Romanesque 
style  and  the  light  and  airy  cathedral,  whose 
Gothic  arches  and  spires  reach  up  toward  heaven 
— to  mention  only  these  two  well-known  examples — 
in  order  to  make  them  realise  the  power  and  the 
splendour  of  this  civilisation,  which  never  will  cease 
to  impress  the  human  mind.  We  cannot  drop  this 
period  from  our  history;  nor  can  Americans  deny 
that  this  mediaeval  civilisation  is  an  element  even 
in  their  modern  civilisation. 

There  is  an  ingenious  theory  that  history  always 
repeats  itself:  the  German  migrations  corresponded 
to  the  migrations  of  the  Greek  tribes;  the  time  of 
chivalry  was  like  the  time  of  Homer's  heroes;  hu- 
manism represents  the  age  of  Plato  and  Aristotle; 
only  the  repetition  always  has  the  advantage  of 
using  the  results  of  the  former  cycle.  But  we  must 
not  forget  that  from  time  to  time  new  forces  enter 
those  cycles  and  change  their  relation.  At  the  end 


REPETITION  AND  PROGRESS  69 

of  the  classical  period  Christianity  has  come  in  and 
now  runs  as  a  straight  line  through  the  parallel  cy- 
cles; therefore  nothing  in  this  parallelism  is  quite 
exact. 

It  was  the  Christian  church  which  served  to  keep 
the  old  civilisation  alive  through  all  troubles  and 
dangers.  When  classical  training  had  nearly  van- 
ished everywhere  else,  it  was  found  in  some  remote 
monasteries.  Esteem  of  good  style,  love  of  ancient 
poetry,  some  chance  bits  of  philosophy  had  safely 
weathered  the  storm.  But  it  was  only  in  combina- 
tion with  the  Bible  that  those  remains  of  classical 
reading  were  allowed  to  persist.  The  mediaeval  civ- 
ilisation was  Biblical  at  its  base. 

Saint  Jerome,  who  was  a  great  admirer  of  classical 
eloquence  but  a  stern  defender  of  pure  Christian- 
ity, tells  in  a  friendly  letter  to  a  certain  lady  a 
sad  experience  of  his  own.  He  had  read  much  of 
Vergil  and  Cicero  and  other  pagan  books,  when 
one  night  he  found  himself  suddenly  summoned  be- 
fore the  heavenly  judge.  "Who  are  you?"  he  was 
questioned.  "I  am  a  Christian,"  he  replied. 
"Thou  liest,  thou  art  a  Ciceronian,"  was  the  judge's 
answer.  And  forthwith  he  was  given  over  to  cruel 
constables,  who  beat  him  frightfully  until  he  prom- 
ised never  to  touch  a  pagan  book  again.  When  he 
awoke  in  the  morning  he  still  felt  the  blows.  The 


70  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

story  is  mere  fancy,  and  Saint  Jerome  never  proves 
so  guilty  of  imitating  his  adored  classical  models 
as  in  this  very  letter.  He  was  an  actor  who  knew 
how  to  pose.  But  by  this  letter  he  has  caused  plenty 
of  people  in  later  time  to  dream  over  again  the 
frightful  experience  he  describes  so  suggestively. 
Dozens  of  monks  and  nuns  have  felt  blows  struck 
upon  them  by  invisible  hands  for  having  given 
themselves  too  much  to  the  seduction  of  reading 
classical  books  instead  of  the  Bible.  Again  and 
again  the  leaders  of  monastic  institutions  had  to 
insist  upon  the  rule  that  the  Bible  must  be  read 
and  no  pagan  books.  Hrotswitha  of  Gandersheim, 
the  nun  who  celebrated  the  great  acts  of  the  em- 
peror Otto  I,  wrote  some  Biblical  comedies,  in  order 
to  prevent  the  nuns  from  enjoying  the  comedies 
of  Plautus  and  Terence. 

On  the  other  hand,  all  the  great  fathers  of  the 
church  insisted  upon  classical  training;  so  did  Saint 
Jerome  himself  and  Saint  Augustine,  not  to  speak  of 
the  great  classical  scholars  in  Christian  bishoprics  in 
the  East  (Plate  XII).  And  even  in  the  later  centu- 
ries, when  classical  civilisation  had  gone  and  was  only 
kept  up  artificially  by  assiduous  reading,  it  was  the 
church  which  maintained  the  right  and  the  neces- 
sity of  a  classical  training  for  its  clergy.  Alcuin 
was  proud  of  the  classical  training  he  had  had  at 


PLATE  XII— BYZANTINE  MINIATURE 
(Psalter,  Paris  B.  N.  gr.  139) 

David,  playing  harp  while  watching  his  sheep,  looks  like  Orpheus  in  Greek  art. 
The  female  figure  at  the  left  represents  Melody,  while  at  the  right-hand  corner 
Echo,  also  personified,  is  listening  behind  a  pillar.  The  man  in  the  cave  to 
the  right  is  Mount  Bethlehem. 

From  "  Die  Wiener  Genesis."     F.  Tempsky,  Vienna. 


CLASSICAL  TRAINING  71 

home,  at  the  famous  monastic  school  of  York  under 
the  direction  of  Abbot  Albert.  He  enjoyed  finding 
kernels  of  truth  in  the  writings  of  the  heathen,  and 
he  pointed  out  that  Saint  Paul  had  done  the  same. 
There  was  a  time  when  there  was  no  reading  at  all 
outside  the  clergy  and  the  monasteries,  but  this 
reading  was  a  combination  of  classical  and  Biblical. 
That  is  the  great  merit  of  the  mediaeval  church. 

Mediaeval  civilisation  had  various  foundations, 
but  the  Bible  was  one  of  them,  and  the  most  im- 
portant one.  That  is  what  we  find  wherever  we  try 
to  analyse  mediaeval  culture. 

What  was  the  aspect  of  the  world  at  this  period? 
The  world  seemed  to  be  an  edifice  of  three  floors. 
Above  was  the  heaven,  a  compact  dome,  in  which 
the  stars  were  fixed,  while  the  planets  moved  in  their 
own  sphere;  over  the  sky  was  the  space  where  God 
or,  let  us  say,  according  to  the  usual  expression  of 
that  time,  the  holy  Trinity  dwells,  surrounded  and 
adored  by  millions  upon  millions  of  angels,  who  keep 
heaven  and  earth  in  continuous  communication. 
Besides,  the  heaven  can  be  rent  asunder;  then  the 
angels  look  down  to  earth,  and  from  time  to  time 
a  pious  man  is  allowed  to  enter  and  see  the  heavenly 
mysteries  and  the  glory  of  the  saints.  The  earth, 
the  abode  of  man,  is  a  large  round  plane;  its  centre 
Jerusalem,  where,  at  the  same  place,  Adam  was  bur- 


72  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

led  and  Christ  was  crucified,  so  that  the  blood  of 
the  Saviour  dropping  down  reached  Adam's  skull. 
The  earth  was  surrounded  by  the  ocean.  At  its 
boundaries  all  kinds  of  strange  beings — men  with 
dogs'  faces,  giants,  pygmies — were  to  be  found. 
There  was  still  an  earthly  paradise — not  to  be  con- 
founded with  the  paradise  in  heaven,  the  goal  of 
human  longing.  This  earthly  paradise  was  un- 
known and  inaccessible  to  the  greater  part  of  men, 
but  from  time  to  time  a  pious  hermit  or  a  favourite 
of  fortune  reached  it;  the  lucky  man  on  his  return 
had  exciting  stories  to  tell  about  the  wealth  and  the 
bliss  of  this  paradise,  but  he  never  could  find  the 
way  again.  I  have  read  an  accurate  description  of 
the  way  from  paradise  to  Rome,  giving  the  exact 
number  of  days  and  months,  but  there  was  nothing 
said  about  how  to  come  from  Rome  to  paradise! 

Below  the  earth  was  the  great  dark  cellar  called 
hell;  here  the  devil  was  at  home  with  his  compan- 
ions. But  these  demons  did  not  like  their  abode; 
they  preferred  to  roam  the  earth  and  play  jokes 
on  men  and  women.  As  the  angels  from  above  were 
kind  and  helpful  to  man,  so  the  devils  were  cunning 
and  malicious.  But  many  a  time  the  devil  showed 
himself  stupid;  a  clever  boy  might  easily  cheat  him. 
The  devil's  aim  was  to  capture  the  frivolous  and 
to  seduce  the  pious  in  order  to  bring  them  all 


THE  VIEW  OF  THE  WORLD  73 

into  hell.  Here  the  various  categories  of  sinners 
had  their  separate  compartments,  where  they  were 
punished  according  to  the  varying  nature  of  their 
sins.  Mediaeval  writers  describe  these  various  tor- 
tures, and  they  know  more  about  the  geography  of 
hell  than  they  usually  know  about  the  geography  of 
the  earth. 

Now,  according  to  the  view  of  that  time  this  is  all 
Biblical.  A  modern  reader  would  find  difficulties 
in  looking  for  it  in  his  Bible;  but  he  will  recognise 
some  of  the  motives  as  clearly  Biblical.  Further 
investigation  will  show  him  that  other  notions  are 
brought  in  from  the  late  classical  philosophy,  and 
finally  he  will  discover  a  large  amount  of  folk-lore, 
German  folk-lore.  All  this  mingled  together  made 
a  very  curious  combination,  and  the  most  curious 
point  was  that  this  combination  was  regarded  as 
Biblical.  It  was  upon  the  authority  of  the  Bible 
that  the  church  accepted  this  whole  view  of  the 
world  and  put  it  before  the  people,  judging  all 
doubts  and  divergences  from  its  teaching  as  in- 
tolerable heresy.  It  is  this  naive  way  of  reading 
between  the  lines,  this  allegorical  method  of  mak- 
ing the  Bible  say  what  it  does  not  say,  which 
we  have  already  found  in  the  Greek  fathers  of  the 
fourth  century  when,  in  commenting  upon  the  hexa- 
emeron,  the  six  days'  work  of  creation,  they  intro- 


74  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

duced  whatever  they  had  read  about  the  world  and 
nature  in  the  works  of  Plato  and  Aristotle.  In  the 
time  of  which  we  are  speaking  these  great  Greek 
philosophers  were  known  only  indirectly,  but  never- 
theless they  exercised  much  influence  through  later 
imitators.  Boethius  was  the  one  great  authority  of 
this  time,  besides  the  Bible. 

The  Bible's  influence  is  still  more  evident  if  we 
turn  to  the  mediaeval  view  of  history.  What  was 
history?  People  at  this  time  had  few  notions  about 
what  was  happening  in  the  world;  there  were  no 
means  of  communication,  nor  had  they  a  conception 
of  history  as  a  coherent  series  of  events  in  which 
each  link  is  the  effect  of  what  precedes  as  well  as 
the  cause  of  what  comes  after.  They  simply  regis- 
tered the  facts  which  chance  made  known  to  them. 
The  chronicle  is  the  form  of  record  which  prevails 
at  this  period.  There  was  no  history  of  the  world; 
what  passed  for  such  was  the  history  of  the  Jewish 
people  as  given  in  the  Bible  and  the  history  of  the 
Christian  church  as  recorded  by  certain  chronicles. 
Both  together  made  up  the  history  of  mankind.  The 
first  part,  the  history  of  the  Old  Testament,  was  not 
regarded  as  the  history  of  the  Jews,  but  as  the 
history  of  the  people  of  God;  it  was  the  history  of 
our  fathers  the  patriarchs,  the  history  of  the  first 
covenant  finding  its  direct  continuation  in  the  his- 


THE  VIEW  OF  HISTORY  75 

tory  of  the  new  covenant  and  the  Christian  church. 
There  was  only  a  very  slight  conception  of  chro- 
nology; everything  was  arranged  according  to  the 
system  of  a  week,  the  duration  of  the  present  world 
corresponding  to  one  week,  whose  days,  according 
to  the  90th  Psalm,  each  counted  a  thousand  years. 
The  world  was  not  expected  to  endure  beyond 
six  thousand  years,  the  seventh  day  being  reserved 
for  the  millennium.  Into  this  history  of  the  world 
a  few  fragments  of  Greek  and  Roman  history 
found  their  way  by  means  of  an  odd  synchronism: 
David  was  said  to  have  been  a  contemporary  of 
the  Trojan  War,  and  a  correspondence  was  in- 
vented between  the  king  of  Troy  and  the  king  of 
Israel,  in  which  the  latter  excuses  himself  for  not 
coming  to  join  the  Trojan  army.  It  was  in  the 
beginning  of  the  twelfth  century  that  a  famous 
professor  of  the  university  of  Paris  called  Petrus 
Comestor  wrote  his  Historia  Scholastica,  which  for 
all  the  Middle  Ages  served  as  the  text-book  of 
Biblical  history. 

But,  like  the  mediaeval  aspect  of  the  world,  so 
the  history  of  the  world  was  not  purely  Biblical. 
The  Bible  always  had  to  suffer  the  strong  rivalry 
of  apocryphal  and  legendary  fiction.  Already  the 
Jews  had  invented  a  life  of  Adam,  full  of  miraculous 
events,  which  appealed  to  the  taste  of  the  average 


76  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

man  much  more  than  the  simple  and  severe  story  of 
the  Bible  itself;  the  lives  of  Abraham,  of  Moses, 
of  Solomon  were  enriched  in  the  same  way. 
Christianity  continued  this  kind  of  fancy.  The 
story  of  the  holy  root  was  traced  back  into  para- 
dise; it  was  a  branch  from  the  tree  of  life,  given 
to  Adam's  son  Seth  and  planted  by  him  on  his 
father's  tomb.  It  had  been  used  as  a  bridge  over 
the  Kidron  until  the  queen  of  Sheba  arrived  at 
Jerusalem.  Being  a  prophetess,  she  worshipped  this 
holy  root;  consequently  Solomon  tried  to  use  it  in 
his  temple,  but  the  carpenter  did  not  succeed  in 
cutting  it  to  the  necessary  length;  therefore  it  lay 
unused,  "rejected  by  the  builders,"  until  the  time 
came  when  a  tree  was  wanted  to  crucify  Jesus;  so 
Jesus  died — on  the  cross  which  was  the  tree  of  life 
—a  splendid  symbolism,  indeed,  but  set  forth  in  a 
strange  legend.  Or  they  investigated  the  earlier 
history  of  the  thirty  pieces  of  silver  given  to  Judas 
Iscariot  as  the  reward  for  the  betrayal  of  his 
master,  tracing  the  money  back  as  far  as  Abraham. 
The  life  of  Christ  was  surrounded  by  apocryphal 
legends  of  all  kinds:  the  story  of  his  birth  and  of 
his  childhood;  his  stay  in  Egypt;  how  in  their 
flight  lions  and  all  kinds  of  wild  beasts  accom- 
panied the  holy  family;  how  a  palm-tree  bowed 
down  before  them  in  order  to  provide  them  with 


HISTORY  EMBELLISHED  77 

its  fruits;  how  at  Jesus'  arrival  in  Egypt  all  the 
idols  of  the  Egyptians  fell  down;  how  he  helped 
his  father  Joseph  in  his  carpenter  shop;  and  so  on. 
Again  the  miracles  at  his  death,  the  descent  to 
hell,  the  resurrection  and  ascension,  everything  was 
covered  with  an  abundance  of  miraculous  narratives, 
partly  enlargements,  developments  of  the  canonical 
accounts,  partly  mere  fiction.  In  addition  to  this 
apocryphal  life  of  Jesus  there  is  the  life  of  the 
Virgin,  giving  a  most  curious  description  %of  her 
birth  and  childhood  and  again  of  her  death,  making 
every  detail  parallel  to  the  life  of  Christ  himself 
and  yet  keeping  hers  subordinate.  The  mediaeval 
life  of  Christ  begins — one  may  say — with  the  birth 
of  Mary  (or  with  the  story  of  her  parents,  Joachim 
and  Anna)  and  ends  with  the  death  and  assumption 
of  Mary.  The  history  of  the  apostles  as  read  in 
this  period  is  nearly  all  apocryphal  except  the  few 
data  taken  from  the  canonical  book  of  Acts.  Then 
the  history  of  Christianity  is  continued  as  the 
history  of  the  church  according  to  the  scheme  of 
Saint  Augustine's  De  civitate  del  (the  City  of  God) : 
the  church  is  the  city  of  God  and  beside  it  is  the 
city  of  this  age,  the  kingdom  of  this  world,  the  one 
spiritual,  the  other  secular,  with  two  parallel  lines 
of  development.  This  is  best  shown  by  the  mural 
decoration  in  Charlemagne's  palace  at  Ingelheim  on 


78  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

the  Rhine,  where  two  series  of  pictures,  one  giving 
the  Biblical  history  according  to  the  Old  and  New 
Testaments,  the  other  tracing  the  profane  history 
from  Ninus,  king  of  Babylon,  down  to  Charlemagne 
himself,  were  painted  on  opposite  walls.  That  is 
the  mediaeval  view  of  history.  We  may  add  that, 
according  to  this  view,  history  begins  in  heaven 
when  the  holy  Trinity  conceives  the  idea  of  creation, 
and  ends  in  heaven  at  the  last  judgment.  Our  view 
of  history  is  a  different  one,  but  we  cannot  help 
agreeing  that  this  is  a  magnificent  conception  and 
that  it  is  Biblical,  too,  in  its  main  points. 

It  is  partly  built  upon  the  Apocrypha,  of  course. 
Regarding  these  Apocrypha  the  attitude  of  the 
church  changed  a  good  deal  during  our  period.  The 
early  view  is  set  forth  in  several  utterances  from 
the  Roman  bishops  of  the  fifth  and  sixth  centuries, 
and  is  represented  'in  its  sharpest  form  in  the  so- 
called  decree  of  Pope  Gelasius,  which  condemns  all 
Apocrypha  as  heretical  writings  totally  to  be  rejected 
and  detested  and  not  to  be  used  in  any  way  by  a 
Catholic  Christian.  We  found  this  Puritan  view 
prevailing  in  Charlemagne's  Libri  Carolini.  It  is 
predominant  among  the  theologians  of  the  Caro- 
lingian  time.  They  scarcely  use  apocryphal  books, 
and  when  they  do  they  always  refer  to  them  as  to 
doubtful  books  devoid  of  all  authority.  But  gradu- 


APOCRYPHA  AND  LEGENDS  79 

ally  the  Apocrypha  came  into  favour;  they  are  used 
freely  alongside  the  canonical  books.  They  are  very 
much  of  the  same  kind  as  the  legends  of  the  saints; 
and  those  legends  of  the  saints  are  favoured  by  the 
people,  too.  At  last,  in  the  thirteenth  century,  even 
theologians  do  not  distinguish  between  canonical 
and  apocryphal  books.  They  quote  the  Gospel  of 
Nicodemus  alongside  the  Gospel  of  Matthew  or  of 
John;  they  call  it  the  fifth  Gospel  and  have  it 
copied  in  their  Bible  manuscripts.  So  they  have  a 
letter  from  Saint  Paul  to  the  Laodiceans  and  other 
Apocrypha  inserted  in  or  attached  to  the  Bible. 
And  the  common  people  were  fond  of  these  Apocry- 
pha and  delighted  to  hear  the  preacher  quote  them 
because  the  bizarre  miracles  appealed  to  their  taste. 
There  was  almost  no  science,  no  medicine  in  this 
time;  the  world  seemed  to  be  full  of  miracles  having 
no  rational  connection  with  one  another.  There 
was  no  causality,  no  law  of  nature.  This  was  ex- 
actly the  same  view  that  we  have  in  most  parts  of 
the  Bible.  Therefore  people  did  not  feel  any  dif- 
ficulty in  identifying  their  own  notions  about  mir- 
acle and  nature  with  the  Biblical  ones.  Nay,  we 
may  say  that  many  of  the  legendary  miracle  stories 
are  copied  after  Biblical  patterns.  Even  the  word- 
ing is  often  modelled  according  to  Biblical  phra- 
seology. "Healing  all  manner  of  disease  and  all 


80  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

manner  of  sickness,"  from  Matt.  9  :  35,  is  repeated 
in  many  a  saint's  life. 

Bible  history  in  the  embellished  form  which  we 
have  just  now  observed  inspired  mediaeval  art.  In 
the  first  place,  there  were  the  inner  walls  of  the 
churches,  usually  painted  from  top  to  bottom.  If 
we  remember  that  a  Romanesque  church  had  only 
very  small  windows,  we  understand  what  a  large 
space  was  given  to  painting.  Pictures  are  the  text- 
book for  those  who  cannot  read;  so  Pope  Gregory 
the  Great  had  said,  and  this  dictum  was  repeated 
many  a  time.  It  is  true,  of  course.  These  plain 
mural  paintings,  awkward  as  they  often  are,  make 
a  greater  impression  on  a  simple  mind  than  even 
the  best  written  account  could  produce.  The  art  is 
nothing  but  illustration;  the  painter  tries  to  bring 
before  the  people  who  view  his  work  the  main 
features  of  the  Biblical  text.  One  must,  indeed, 
know  the  text  in  order  to  understand  the  pictures. 
Sometimes  the  spectator  is  helped  by  additional  in- 
scriptions. To  the  illiterates  these  may  be  read  and 
explained  by  the  priest;  and  then  even  the  simplest 
peasant  will  understand  and  always  remember  the 
story.  Some  churches  were  decorated  in  this  way 
twice  or  even  oftener,  the  first  painting  being  cov- 
ered with  lime  and  whitewashed  and  then  another 
painting  being  put  upon  it,  according  to  the  style 


PAINTING  AND  SCULPTURE  81 

of  the  later  time.  Here,  again,  we  see  the  Biblical 
history,  pure  and  plain  at  the  beginning,  but  by  and 
by  combined  with  motives  taken  from  the  apoc- 
ryphal sources  and  the  lives  of  the  saints.  At  the 
annunciation  the  angel  meets  the  Virgin  Mary  at 
a  well;  it  is  to  his  mother  Mary  that  the  risen 
Christ  appears  before  he  reveals  himself  to  his  dis- 
ciples. 

In  the  Gothic  period  sculpture  is  more  favoured, 
the  walls  being  broken  up  into  groups  of  columns 
and  large  windows.  This  arrangement  lent  itself 
more  to  the  representation  of  individual  figures  of 
saints;  but  even  so  Biblical  personalities,  and  some- 
times even  Biblical  scenes,  were  chosen,  and  the 
large  windows,  with  their  stained  glass,  offered  an- 
other possibility  for  decoration  based  on  Bible  sto- 
ries. Besides,  the  whole  building  is  directed  by  a 
scheme  of  Biblical  symbolism  difficult  for  us  to  un- 
derstand but  dear  to  the  men  of  that  period.  They 
loved  symbolism.  The  cult  of  the  Virgin  Mary  was 
surrounded  by  it.  She  was  the  queen  of  heaven, 
she  was  paradise,  she  was  the  tower,  she  was  the 
unicorn,  she  was  the  well,  and  so  on,  and  all  these 
symbols  were  taken  from  or  related  to  the  Bible. 

The  growing  wealth  and  the  higher  standard  of 
civilisation  created  a  new  demand  for  illuminated 
manuscripts.  The  artists  of  this  period  did  not  fol- 


82  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

low  the  classical  scheme  of  filling  the  lower  margin 
with  representations  in  water-colour;  they  put  little 
pictures,  framed  like  those  on  the  walls,  into  the 
text  itself,  or  they  decorated  the  initials  of  each  book 
or  chapter  (Plate  XIII).  In  turning  over  the  pages 
we  admire  the  skill  of  these  artists,  their  simplicity, 
and  sometimes  their  sense  of  humour.  We  seldom 
recognise  what  an  amount  of  reading  and  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Bible  is  contained  in  these  little  pictures; 
and  how,  on  the  other  hand,  they  helped  and  stimu- 
lated Bible  reading.  We  are  told  of  King  Charles 
V  of  France  (1364-80),  that  he  read  the  Bible  all 
through  once  a  year  during  his  reign.  This  means 
a  period  of  sixteen  years.  We  are  quite  sure  that 
he  had  a  beautifully  illuminated  copy,  and  we  may 
assume  that  the  pictures  helped  him  in  performing 
this  religious  exercise. 

The  art  of  painting  is  often  accompanied  by  the 
art  of  making  verses,  as  I  would  rather  call  this 
mediaeval  poesy.  And  again  it  is  the  Bible  or,  to 
speak  more  accurately,  the  Biblical  history  which 
finds  its  expression  in  this  art.  Besides  the  inscrip- 
tions added  to  the  pictures  and  often  given  in  versi- 
fied form,  there  are  a  number  of  rhymed  Bibles, 
as  these  versifications  of  the  Biblical  history  arc 
called.  There  are  short  verses  giving  the  content 
of  each  book  or  chapter  of  the  Bible  for  mnemonic 


PLATE  XIII-ENGLISH  MINIATURE 

(Latin  Bible,  Brit.  Mus.  Royal  1  D  I) 

From  "  Fac-similes  of  Biblical  Manuscripts."     By  permission  of  the  Trustees  of 
the  British  Museum. 


POETRY  83 

purposes.    There  are  some  real  poems,  too,  dealing 
with  Biblical  subjects. 

The  Bible  and  mediaeval  art  brings  before  us  an- 
other feature  of  civilisation,  which  is  important,  in- 
deed, in  our  own  time  and  which  one  would  scarcely 
think  of  as  originating  with  the  Bible.  I  mean  the 
theatre.  The  old  classical  drama  and  comedy  had 
entirely  died  out.  Plautus  and  Terence  were  read 
in  the  monasteries,  not  played,  and  so  were  the 
Biblical  comedies  by  Hrotswitha,  of  which  we 
have  spoken,  intended  to  be  read  only,  not  played. 
There  was  nothing  but  jugglers,  jesters,  and  dancers. 
On  festival  days  people  amused  themselves  by 
frivolous  masquerades,  which  were  looked  upon  by 
the  church  authorities  with  suspicion  and  contempt 
as  survivals  of  heathen  rites  and  therefore  to  be 
frowned  upon  and  abolished.  Things  took  quite  a 
different  turn  when  some  of  the  clergy  began  at 
Christmas  and  at  Easter  to  present  the  sacred  story 
in  acted  form  in  order  to  illustrate  the  lesson.  They 
did  it  inside  the  church,  directly  before  the  altar. 
It  was  nothing  but  a  dialogue,  developed  out  of  the 
lessons  from  the  Scripture,  the  angel  addressing 
Mary,  the  shepherds  coming  to  see  the  child,  the 
three  Marys  at  the  tomb  and  the  angel  speaking 
to  them,  and  so  on,  as  simply  and  plainly  as  it 


84  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

was  told  in  the  Bible  and  as  it  was  usually  painted 
on  the  walls  of  the  church.  The  people  took  delight 
in  these  representations  and  they  were  soon  en- 
larged. They  had  to  be  removed  from  the  choir 
to  the  front  of  the  church,  the  steps  of  the  entrance 
forming  the  stage.  Soon  more  and  more  persons 
appeared  on  the  stage;  the  laity  joined  the  per- 
formers; the  guilds  (the  trade-unions)  undertook 
the  performance  of  the  play,  and  out  of  these  nai've 
little  representations  of  the  birth  of  Christ  or  his 
passion  and  resurrection  sprang  gorgeous  miracle- 
plays  which  sometimes  lasted  four  days  and  brought 
the  whole  story  from  the  creation  to  the  last  judg- 
ment before  the  bewildered  eyes  of  the  spectators. 
Nothing  could  make  the  Biblical  history  so  familiar 
to  the  people  as  these  plays,  in  which  hundreds  took 
part  as  performers  and  thousands  attended  as  on- 
lookers. There  was  but  little  art.  They  had  no 
scenery;  the  actors  simply  moved  about  in  the 
open  space.  But  it  was  highly  realistic.  We  are 
told  that  they  nearly  killed  the  man  who  was  act- 
ing Judas  Iscariot.  It  was  also  amusing.  Medi- 
aeval piety  did  not  refrain  from  putting  in  just 
before  the  crucifixion  a  sarcastic  dialogue  between 
the  blacksmith,  who  had  to  provide  the  nails, 
and  his  wife,  ending  in  a  scuffle  between  them. 
People  liked  to  see  this.  It  was  on  account  of  these 


MIRACLE-PLAYS  85 

undignified  scenes,  which  kept  increasing,  that  the 
plays  were  abolished  by  secular  and  ecclesiastical 
authorities  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  cen- 
turies, when  through  humanism  and  the  Reforma- 
tion taste  and  piety  had  been  refined.  There  are 
still  a  few  survivals,  such  as  the  Passion  Play  of 
Oberammergau,  which,  however,  has  undergone  a 
thorough  change.  There  is  now  a  revival  of  these 
popular  plays,  but  I  doubt  if  it  will  be  successful. 
Possibly  the  film  will  take  the  place,  as  it  has 
entered  some  churches  already. 

Men  nearly  always  like  to  travel  and  the  Germans 
liked  it  exceedingly  well.  This  tendency  received 
a  special  direction  from  the  Bible;  there  were  so 
many  sacred  sites  in  Palestine  which  a  Christian 
wanted  to  see.  So  since  the  fourth  century  we 
see  many  people  from  the  West — from  Gaul,  Spain, 
later  on  from  Germany  and  England — travelling 
to  the  Holy  Land  in  order  to  visit  all  the  places 
connected  with  the  sacred  history  of  the  Bible.  At 
the  end  of  the  eleventh  century  the  pilgrims  sud- 
denly turned  into  crusaders,  sailing  by  thousands, 
fighting,  settling  down  for  a  while,  going  back  again. 
Then  after  a  period  of  nearly  two  centuries  of  vain 
struggle  for  the  possession  of  the  Holy  Land  they 
changed  again  into  pilgrims.  Meanwhile,  the  Holy 
Land  had  changed  also,  and  Christian  piety,  too. 


86  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

They  were  now  not  so  much  interested  in  visiting 
the  sacred  sites  themselves  as  in  gaining  the  indul- 
gences which  were  granted  in  abundance  to  the  vis- 
itors to  each  of  these  places.  We  still  possess  a  long 
series  of  descriptions  of  these  pilgrimages,  increasing 
from  century  to  century  not  only  in  number  but 
also  in  size.  The  pilgrims  did  not  rest  until  they 
had  fixed  upon  a  certain  location  in  Palestine  for 
every  event  in  the  Bible.  Sometimes  we  seem  to 
catch  the  process  of  fixation.  The  hermit  or  monk 
who  served  as  guide  had  just  told  the  company 
everything  he  himself  knew  about  the  resurrection 
of  Lazarus.  Then  suddenly  some  one  broke  in  with 
the  question,  "And  where  was  it  that  Jesus  met 
Martha?"  and  the  poor  hermit  would  be  sure  to 
show  him  a  rock  or  a  doorway,  of  which  he  had 
never  thought  before.  They  showed  the  pilgrims 
the  place  where  Abraham  and  Melchisedek  met, 
the  tomb  of  Rachel,  the  monastery  of  Elijah  on 
Mount  Carmel.  They  would  show  also  the  man- 
tle Elijah  left  to  Elisha  or  the  widow's  cruse  of  oil 
which  was  always  full.  At  Nazareth  one  could  see 
the  rock  from  which  the  citizens  tried  to  throw  down 
Jesus  headlong,  and  one  could  see  on  the  rock  the 
imprint  of  his  body,  which  he  left  there — according 
to  a  legendary  addition  to  the  story — when  passing 
through  the  crowd  unhurt.  On  the  Mount  of  Olives 


PILGRIMAGES  87 

was  the  Chapel  of  the  Ascension.  Here  the  pil- 
grims could  see  and  worship  the  footprints  made 
by  Jesus  when  he  leaped  up  toward  heaven.  Nay, 
we  are  told  that  people  used  to  carry  away  dust 
from  this  place  to  use  for  charms,  and  yet  the  foot- 
prints never  disappeared.  I  am  giving  these  ex- 
amples in  order  to  show  how  even  here  sacred 
history  and  legend  were  mixed  together.  It  is 
obvious,  however,  from  what  I  have  said  that  the 
pilgrimages  contributed  a  great  deal  to  make  people 
familiar  with  the  Bible  stories;  for  not  only  the  pil- 
grims themselves  but  all  their  people  at  home  were 
mightily  interested  in  what  they  had  seen  and  heard 
in  the  Holy  Land.  We  see  them  build  churches 
representing  the  Holy  Sepulchre.  In  the  later  cen- 
turies they  make  calvaries  and  stations  on  the  way 
to  them,  representing  the  main  points  on  Jesus'  way 
to  the  cross,  on  the  so-called  Via  Dolorosa  at  Jeru- 
salem. There  is  even  (as  I  have  pointed  out  in  my 
book  on  Christusbilder)  a  mutual  influence  between 
the  pilgrimages  and  the  passion  plays,  which  ac- 
counts for  some  changes  in  the  order  of  scenes  and 
the  fixing  of  places  at  Jerusalem. 

The  Bible  continued  to  exercise  its  influence  upon 
the  Law.  As  King  Alfred  of  England  when  collect- 
ing the  laws  of  his  people  put  the  ten  command- 
ments at  the  beginning,  so  likewise  the  German  col- 


88  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

lections,  Schwabenspiegel,  Sachsenspiegel,  and  so  on, 
have  prefaces  which  present  the  national  law  as  an 
emanation  from  the  law  of  God  as  contained  in  the 
Old  and  New  Testaments.  Still  more  important 
than  these  national  laws  was  the  so-called  canon 
law,  the  collection  of  ecclesiastical  canons  and  de- 
crees of  the  Roman  bishops.  It  is  remarkable  that 
this  canon  law,  while  incorporating  naturally  a  good 
deal  of  Biblical  matter,  such  as  the  degrees  of  re- 
lationship within  which  marriage  is  forbidden,  does 
not  make  so  much  use  of  Biblical  authority  as  one 
might  expect.  The  decrees  of  the  popes,  it  is  true, 
usually  begin  with  a  quotation  from  the  Bible,  but 
that  is  more  for  the  sake  of  appearances.  The  fact 
that  the  law  of  the  church,  in  spite  of  all  references 
to  the  Bible,  was  derived  essentially  from  other 
sources,  and  that  the  study  and  the  knowledge  of 
this  law  were  appreciated  as  the  most  important 
attainment  of  a  bishop  or  even  a  clergyman,  is  very 
striking. 

We  have  already  noted  the  influence  which  the 
Bible  exerted  upon  social  and  commercial  life. 
The  German  notion  of  the  king  as  representative 
of  the  nation  was  easily  combined  with  the  theo- 
cratic theory  of  the  Old  Testament.  David's  court, 
with  his  mighty  men  (II  Sam.  23),  furnished  a 
good  example  for  any  royal  court  of  this  period. 


LEGAL  AND  SOCIAL  EFFECTS  89 

Feudalism  seemed  to  agree  with  the  stories  of  the 
patriarchs,  as  when  Abraham  led  forth  his  trained 
men,  three  hundred  and  eighteen  in  number,  and 
pursued  the  invaders  who  had  taken  captive  his 
brother's  son  Lot.  Bondage,  serfdom,  even  slavery, 
seemed  to  be  sanctioned  by  the  Bible.  The  church 
did  not  object  to  slavery  provided  the  Christian 
faith  of  the  slave  was  respected;  he  was  never  to 
be  sold  to  a  Jew  or  a  pagan.  The  opposition  against 
slavery  in  the  Middle  Ages  came  from  the  monas- 
teries. Here  the  ancient  Stoic  doctrine  that  all  men 
are  equal  and  no  man  is  to  be  treated  as  a  brute 
animal  had  been  combined  with  the  Christian  view 
of  brotherhood  that  all  are  children  of  God,  and 
with  the  doctrine  of  the  simple  life.  But  this  theory, 
championed  by  the  monasteries,  spread  only  slowly. 
It  did  not  put  an  end  to  slavery  in  the  northern 
countries  of  Europe  before  the  thirteenth  century. 
In  the  eastern  and  southern  countries,  where  Chris- 
tianity bordered  on  Mohammedanism,  slavery  did 
not  die  out  before  the  sixteenth  century,  and  bond- 
age remained  everywhere  until  the  eighteenth  and 
nineteenth  centuries.  The  Bible  defined  the  posi- 
tion of  the  Jews,  who  as  murderers  of  Jesus  were 
thought  of  as  living  under  the  divine  punishment. 
Whatever  happened  to  them  was  regarded  as  a  pen- 
alty due  to  the  crime  of  their  fathers.  So  they  were 


90  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

exposed  to  all  kinds  of  insults  if  they  were  not  pro- 
tected by  the  king,  whose  personal  serfs  they  were 
held  to  be.  A  large  part  of  this  general  hatred  of 
the  Jews  was  due  to  the  fact  that  they  were  making 
money  out  of  their  trade  and  their  medical  science, 
being  allowed  by  their  own  law  to  take  usury  from 
the  Christians.  The  law  of  Moses  (in  Deut.  23  :  20) 
expressly  says  that  a  Jew  may  lend  upon  usury  to  a 
foreigner,  while  he  is  forbidden  to  do  so  dealing 
with  a  brother.  Now,  as  we  have  already  seen, 
the  Christian  church  adopted  this  law  as  forbidding 
the  Christians  to  lend  at  interest.  The  fatal  result 
was  that  trade  on  the  basis  of  credit  was  made 
almost  impossible,  and  that  the  Jew  was  the  only 
one  who  could  lend  money  at  interest.  As  he 
abused  this  opportunity  by  taking  enormous  usury, 
it  became  evident  that  the  one  remedy  to  be  used 
from  time  to  time  was  to  take  away  from  him  by 
force  all  the  money  he  had  made,  thus  restoring  it 
to  its  proper  source.  The  Jew  might  be  thankful 
if  he  got  off  with  his  life.  Among  the  many  accusa- 
tions brought  against  the  Jews  on  such  occasions, 
one  of  the  most  effective  was  the  indictment  that 
they  had  falsified  their  Bibles,  putting  in  curses 
against  the  Christians,  or  that  they  had  insulted  and 
destroyed  Christian  Bibles.  The  criminal  charge  of 
falsifying  the  holy  Scriptures  had  been  raised  against 


ARTIFICIAL  BIBLICALITY  91 

many  heretics,  too,  and  in  most  cases  had  been 
proved  to  be  untrue.  It  could  be  retorted  that 
the  Christian  church  itself,  during  the  first  cen- 
turies, had  "improved"  the  Psalter  in  many  a 
place  by  slight  Christian  interpolations.  Destroy- 
ing books  by  fire  was  at  this  time  one  of  the  most 
common  means  used  by  the  church  in  fighting  Jews 
and  heretics,  and  vice  versa.  The  Bible  recorded 
not  only  the  burning  of  the  magical  books  at  Ephesus 
but  also  the  burning  of  the  holy  Scriptures  by  Antio- 
chus  Epiphanes.  So  this  also  was  "  Bible  tradition." 

To  sum  up  our  survey  of  mediaeval  civilisation 
we  find  the  Bible  recognised  as  one,  if  not  as  the 
one,  foundation.  Its  influence  was  to  be  seen  in 
every  department:  the  view  of  the  world,  the  view 
of  history,  arts  and  sciences,  social  life  and  com- 
merce. It  was  to  the  Bible  that  people  referred, 
even  if  the  thing  had  not  been  deduced  from  the 
Bible;  they  made  it  appear  Biblical,  though  it  was 
not  so  in  itself,  because  they  felt  that  it  had  to  be 
Biblical  if  it  was  to  be  recognised  as  an  integral  part 
of  Christian  civilisation.  That  is  what  makes  it  so 
difficult  for  us  to  define  the  real  influence  of  the 
Bible,  there  is  so  much  artificial  Biblicality. 

The  Bible  was  the  leading  norm,  and  it  was  recog- 
nised as  such.  Never  had  the  Bible  had  a  higher 
estimation  or  a  more  undisputed  influence. 


92  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

And  yet  the  real  influence  of  the  Bible  was  a 
limited  one.  It  had  not  only  to  face  the  rivalry 
of  the  classics  on  one  side  but  of  the  Apocrypha, 
legends,  ecclesiastical  traditions  on  the  other.  Its 
real  influence  was  mostly  indirect.  Biblical  ideas 
had  been  incorporated  into  the  works  on  the  world 
and  nature;  Biblical  history  had  been  used  for  the 
text-books  of  history,  and  now  these  books  came 
to  be  substitutes  for  the  Bible.  All  read  the  His- 
toria  Scholastica  of  Peter  Comestor;  very  few  read 
the  Bible.  And  those  few  again  read  mostly  the 
historical  parts  of  the  Bible  without  caring  for  the 
books  of  the  prophets  and  the  letters  of  the  apostles. 
A  wide-spread  substitute  for  the  Bible  was  the 
so-called  Biblia  Historialis,  which  gave  the  Biblical 
history  in  a  convenient  not  to  say  entertaining 
and  even  amusing  form.  Another  well-known  sub- 
stitute was  the  so-called  Biblia  Pauperum  ("Bible 
of  the  poor),'*  showing  the  most  important  fea- 
tures of  the  life  of  Christ,  together  with  typical 
scenes  from  the  Old  Testament  and  some  verses 
from  the  Bible.  By  means  of  all  these  substitutes 
the  people  became  very  familiar  with  Biblical  his- 
tory, but  they  knew  nothing  about  doctrines.  Theo- 
logians, of  course,  did,  but  their  eyes  were  blinded 
by  the  tradition  of  the  church,  the  doctrine  of  the 
fathers.  They  interpreted  the  Bible  according  to 


INFLUENCE  LIMITED  93 

tradition.  That  is  the  great  demerit  of  this  age; 
the  people  had  free  access  to  the  Bible,  but  the  Bible 
became  alien  to  them  by  reason  of  its  many  substi- 
tutes and  its  successful  rivals.  The  reaction  against 
this  will  furnish  the  subject  for  our  next  chapter. 


THE  BIBLE  STIRS  NON-CONFORMIST  MOVE- 
MENTS (1150-1450) 

MEDLEVAL  civilisation  has  a  twofold  aspect.  It 
looks  backward,  to  the  old  church  and  the  old 
Roman  empire;  so  far  it  is  Biblical  and  classical. 
But  it  also  looks  forward,  to  the  development  of  the 
nations  and  later  to  the  development  of  the  indi- 
vidual personality,  as  this  has  been  realised  in  the 
Renaissance;  so  far  it  is  secular  and,  in  a  way, 
modern.  In  the  earlier  part  of  the  Middle  Ages  the 
nations  did  not  feel  strong  enough  by  themselves. 
They  were  parts  of  the  empire,  and  all  children  of 
the  one  mother  church.  The  church  was  training 
them,  and  it  fulfilled  this  task  in  an  admirable  way. 
But  the  children  grew  up  and  the  church  lost  its 
power  over  them.  They  declared  themselves  of  age 
and  independent  at  the  very  moment  when  the 
church  seemed  to  have  the  largest  and  most  un- 
doubted influence. 

The  church  was  training  the  nations  by  means  of 
the  Bible,  and  now  it  is  the  Bible  which  stirs  the 

anti-ecclesiastical  movements.    The  Bible  had  been 

94 


WITHDRAWN  FROM  PUBLIC  USE  95 

used  by  the  church  chiefly  in  an  indirect  way;  parts 
of  the  Bible  or  substitutes  for  it  had  taken  its  place. 
Now  the  complete  Bible  made  its  appeal  to  the 
people  and  gave  directions  which  were  exactly  op- 
posite to  the  training  given  by  the  church. 

The  Bible  had  originally  been  accessible  to  every- 
body. In  the  first  centuries  the  church  itself  had 
insisted  upon  this  publicity,  as  we  have  seen  in 
the  first  chapter.  Then  came  a  time  when  almost 
no  one  could  read  and  the  clergy  had  the  Bible 
practically  to  themselves.  They  did  not  take  away 
the  Bible  from  the  hands  of  the  laymen;  the  lay- 
men themselves  did  not  care  for  it  because  they 
could  not  read  it;  they  were  totally  dependent  on 
the  clergy.  But  now  civilisation  had  made  a  new 
start;  the  art  of  reading  became  again  popular. 
And  suddenly  a  desire  for  reading  the  Bible  spread 
among  the  people.  The  clergy  were  astonished  to 
find  the  laymen  using  their  right  of  reading  the 
Bible  themselves.  That  was  something  new,  and 
we  see  the  clergy  puzzled,  we  hear  them  complain. 
They  did  not  want  people  to  read  the  Bible,  for — 
as  they  said — this  would  introduce  them  to  heresy. 
And  so  it  proved. 

The  movement  starts  from  the  south  of  France. 
As  early  as  the  eleventh  century  we  hear  of  people 
here  who  gather  in  order  to  hear  the  Bible  read. 


96  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

It  is  the  cardinal  Pietro  Damiani,  a  friend  of  Greg- 
ory VII,  who  complains  of  their  presumption.  They 
are  plain,  simple  folk,  shopkeepers,  farmers,  wo- 
men, having  no  theological  education,  and  yet  aim- 
ing at  understanding  the  Bible.  The  theologians 
of  this  period  treated  the  Bible  as  a  book  of  secrets. 
In  order  to  understand  it  aright  one  had  to  be 
initiated  into  the  art  of  interpreting  everything  by 
allegory  according  to  the  authority  of  the  fathers. 
They  used  to  quote  Saint  Jerome,  that  the  Bible 
was  a  mysterious  stream;  one  man  can  walk  through 
in  safety  while  another  would  be  drowned.  They 
therefore  disapproved  earnestly  of  this  reading  of 
the  Bible  by  unprepared  tradesmen,  women,  and 
children.  But  reading  did  not  stop.  The  same 
complaint  occurs  again  and  again  during  the  next 
decades.  We  hear  of  people  in  the  diocese  of  Metz, 
simple  country  folk,  reading  the  Bible.  The  church 
authorities  already  began  to  be  alarmed  and  to  take 
a  more  severe  attitude  toward  the  offenders. 

The  main  movement,  to  be  mentioned  here,  is  the 
one  connected  with  the  name  of  Peter  Waldo,  a 
merchant  of  Lyons,  who  was  a  zealous  reader  of  the 
Bible  himself,  and  travelling  about  held  frequent 
meetings  with  people  of  the  same  sort.  The  story 
of  his  "conversion,"  as  given  by  the  best  authorities, 
runs  as  follows.  It  was  in  1176,  the  year  of  a  great 


PETER   WALDO  97 

famine,  that  one  Sunday  afternoon  he  listened  to  a 
jongleur  reciting  the  famous  legend  of  Saint  Alexis 
the  poor.  He  was  struck  by  this  heroism  of  poverty, 
and  the  next  day  he  asked  a  well-known  master  of 
theology  what  was  the  surest  way  to  God.  The 
master,  following  the  best  tradition  of  the  mediaeval 
church,  told  him  to  follow  Christ's  advice :  "  If  thou 
wouldst  be  perfect,  go,  sell  whatsoever  thou  hast, 
and  give  to  the  poor."  So  Peter  separates  himself 
from  wife  and  children  and  begins  to  live  the  life  of 
a  poor  man — a  beggar.  Others  join  him;  two  by 
two,  on  foot,  they  go  preaching  the  gospel.  They 
are  not  anxious  for  the  morrow;  they  do  not  work; 
they  have  faith  that  whatever  they  need  will  be 
supplied  to  them.  Thus  they  try  to  fulfil  Christ's 
commandments  and  to  imitate  his  disciples.  They 
refuse  to  take  an  oath;  they  censure  lying  as  a 
deadly  sin;  they  condemn  all  shedding  of  blood 
either  in  war  or  in  the  execution  of  justice.  The 
fraternity  called  itself  the  Poor  in  Spirit.  At  the 
beginning  they  thought  themselves  to  be  true  mem- 
bers of  the  church;  only  later,  when  the  church 
denied  to  them  the  right  of  preaching,  did  they  form 
a  sect,  Peter  being  ordained  bishop  and  giving  orders 
to  other  members  of  the  community. 

Meanwhile  a  similar  fraternity  of  poor  men,  or 
humiliati  as  they  were  called  here,  had  made  their 


98  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

appearance  in  the  north  of  Italy.  It  was  a  kind  of 
workmen's  union.  So  far  as  we  know  there  was 
no  connection  at  the  beginning  between  this  move- 
ment and  the  one  at  Lyons.  Both  started  indepen- 
dently, and  it  was  only  later  that  they  came  into  con- 
tact, without,  however,  amalgamating.  The  Italian 
fraternity  spread  from  Milan  all  through  that  region 
and  was  rapidly  extended  into  Germany,  while  from 
Lyons  the  Poor  went  through  France  and  even 
through  Spain.  It  was  an  enormous  movement 
among  the  laity,  and  it  was  stirred  by  the  Bible. 
Peter  Waldo  desired  to  have  the  Bible  translated 
into  his  own  vernacular;  and  it  was  by  reading  the 
Bible  that  these  people  got  their  enthusiasm  and 
their  eagerness  even  to  suffer  persecution  and  death. 
Many  scholars  in  -  former  days  treated  this 
Waldensian  movement  as  truly  Protestant;  they 
used  to  call  Peter  Waldo  and  his  followers  re- 
formers before  the  Reformation.  The  Protestant 
church  in  Italy,  calling  itself  Waldensian  and  grow- 
ing in  our  own  day  more  and  more  vigorously  in 
the  spirit  of  Calvinistic  Protestantism,  seemed  to 
support  this  view.  And  yet  it  is  wrong.  The  true 
Protestantism  of  the  Waldensians  dates  only  from 
the  sixteenth  century,  when  they  came  in  contact 
with  Geneva,  and  then  went  over  to  Calvinism. 
Before  this  they  had  been  something  quite  different, 


THE  POOR  OF  LYONS  AND  MILAN          99 

a  purely  mediaeval  form  of  Christianity.  The  char- 
acteristic point  is  that  they  take  the  gospel  as  a 
law,  exactly  as  the  monks  did.  If  the  monks  kept 
to  poverty,  fasting,  praying,  and  so  on,  in  order 
to  fulfil  the  gospel's  commands,  these  people  did 
the  same;  only  they  did  not  become  monks  and 
enter  a  monastery;  they  continued  to  live  in  the 
world,  carrying  on  their  ordinary  business,  because, 
they  said,  the  commands  of  the  gospel  were  not 
given  to  the  monks  only,  but  to  every  Christian. 
They  abolished  the  double  standard  of  morality 
which  the  church  had  established,  the  standard 
of  perfection,  reached  only  by  the  clergy  and  monks, 
and  the  standard  of  secular  morality,  kept  by  the 
average  Christian;  but  they  abolished  it  in  the 
opposite  way  from  the  reformers,  by  making  the 
ascetic  ideal  the  rule  for  every  Christian.  It  was 
from  the  Bible  that  they  deduced  this  ideal  and  its 
binding  force  for  every  Christian,  but  it  was,  of 
course,  the  mediaeval  understanding  of  the  Bible 
which  they  followed. 

It  is  important  to  distinguish  clearly  this  Wal- 
densian  movement  from  the  so-called  Albigensian 
one.  This  also  has  to  do  with  the  Bible,  and 
sometimes  seems  closely  akin  to  the  former,  but 
is  based  on  an  entirely  different  principle.  It  goes 
back  to  a  very  early  time  and  originates  outside 


100  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

of  Christianity.  It  was  in  the  third  century  after 
Christ  in  Persia,  that  a  certain  Mani  tried  to 
reform  the  religion  of  Zoroaster  by  adding  Gnostic 
speculations.  He  failed,  and  was  put  to  death  to- 
gether with  some  of  his  adherents.  But  the  move- 
ment spread  and  reached  as  far  as  Gaul  and  North 
Africa  in  the  West.  Here  this  Gnostic  doctrine  of 
Persian  origin  took  the  form  of  a  Christian  heresy. 
Manicheism,  as  it  was  called,  accepted  the  Christian 
Bible,  or  at  least  some  parts  of  it.  It  accepted  still 
more  heartily  the  Christian  Apocrypha,  which 
seemed  to  be  written  for  the  very  purpose  of  sup- 
porting its  favourite  doctrines.  Saint  Augustine, 
having  been  for  a  long  time  an  adherent  of  Man- 
icheism, afterward  spent  a  great  deal  of  his  energy 
in  arguing  with  this  sect  and  refuting  their  theories 
and  their  criticism.  The  leading  idea  was  a  strictly 
dualistic  conception  of  the  world  such  as  is  char- 
acteristic of  Persian  religion:  there  are  two  gods, 
a  good  one  and  a  bad  one;  in  other  words,  God 
and  the  devil  are  of  the  same  rank.  The  devil 
is  the  author  of  this  bodily  creation;  whatsoever 
is  material  comes  from  him;  while  God,  the  good 
god,  is  purely  spiritual  and  does  not  create  any- 
thing but  spiritual  beings.  So  man,  who  is  of  a 
mixed  nature,  having  a  divine  soul  in  a  material 
body,  is  bound  to  defy  the  devil  by  weakening  the 


MANICHEANS  AND  ALBIGEN&AISJS,  I , ,  101 

material  part  of  his  being.  He  has  to  refrain  from 
meat  and  wine,  from  marriage,  and  from  a  number  of 
things  which  belong  to  the  devil's  dominion.  This 
highest  degree  of  perfection  only  few  could  reach. 
Therefore  the  Manicheans  had  several  classes  of 
members:  the  lower  classes  living  in  the  world  had 
to  support  the  higher  by  their  manual  labour;  the 
higher  class  of  the  so-called  "perfect"  lived  entirely 
for  prayer  and  spiritual  exercises.  It  was  a  well- 
organised  body,  extending  over  all  the  countries. 
They  had  their  own  Pope,  residing  usually  in  the 
East.  They  were  persecuted  in  Persia,  persecuted 
in  the  Roman  empire,  persecuted  later  both  by  the 
church  and  by  the  secular  powers;  but  in  spite  of 
all  difficulties  they  kept  on,  living  in  secrecy  and 
trying  to  conform  as  much  as  possible  in  outward 
appearance  to  the  requirements  for  church  members. 
They  went  to  the  Catholic  church,  even  attended 
mass  and  took  the  holy  communion — one  charge 
brought  against  them  was  that  instead  of  eating  the 
consecrated  bread  they  concealed  it  in  their  mouth 
and  spit  it  out  afterward — but  they  had  their  own 
clandestine  congregations,  often  by  night,  often  out- 
side of  the  town.  They  appear  here  and  there  un- 
der different  names.  They  call  themselves  Cathari, 
or  the  pure  ones,  from  which  is  derived  "Ketzer," 
the  German  word  for  heretics.  In  the  East  they 


102          ^HE' BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

often  are  called  Bogomils  or  Paulicians;  in  the  West 
the  usual  name  given  to  them  was  Albigensians, 
from  a  town,  Albi,  in  the  south  of  France,  where 
they  had  their  headquarters. 

The  attitude  of  these  Albigensians  toward  the 
Bible  was  a  somewhat  divided  one.  They  accepted 
the  New  Testament  and  interpreted  it  according  to 
their  dualistic  theory  as  a  law  of  asceticism,  herein 
corresponding  to  the  church's  interpretation.  They 
praised  exceedingly  the  fourth  Gospel,  and  used  its 
opening  verses  at  their  solemn  initiation,  the  so- 
called  consolamentum,  by  which  an  adherent  got  the 
degree  of  "perfect"  and  became  a  member  of  the 
highest  class.  But  they  rejected  the  Old  Testament, 
either  the  whole  of  it  or  the  greater  part,  some  ad- 
mitting that  the  Psalter,  Job,  the  books  of  Solomon, 
and  the  books  of  the  prophets  were  inspired  by  the 
good  god  or  (as  they  used  to  say)  were  written  in 
heaven.  The  rest,  they  said,  came  from  the  devil, 
and  they  criticised  strongly  the  historical  parts  of 
the  Old  Testament,  in  particular  the  account  of 
the  creation  given  in  Genesis.  They  took  this  and 
all  the  other  stories  in  a  strictly  literal  sense,  not 
allowing  for  any  allegorical  interpretation.  It  was 
in  the  discussions  against  the  Manicheans  that  Saint 
Augustine,  and  through  him  the  Western  church, 
learned  to  value  the  allegorical  method  of  interpre- 


ALBIGENSIANS  AND  WALDENSIANS        103 

tation.  It  was  the  easiest  way  of  evading  all  the 
difficulties  which  were  raised  by  the  criticism  of  the 
Manicheans. 

This  Manichean  or,  to  use  the  mediaeval  expres- 
sion, Albigensian  heresy  could  hardly  be  defined  as 
a  movement  incited  by  the  Bible.  It  was  wholly 
different  from  the  Waldensian  movement  and  its 
allies.  The  Waldensians  were  at  the  beginning 
loyal  members  of  the  Catholic  church,  and  were 
driven  into  opposition  only  by  the  resistance  of  the 
clergy,  not  being  allowed  to  read  and  to  use  their 
Bible  and  being  opposed  and  disturbed  in  their 
harmless  meetings;  but  after  having  been  separated 
from  the  church  they  kept  aloof  from  it.  The 
Albigensians,  on  the  other  hand,  were  at  heart  op- 
posed to  everything  in  Christianity.  They  were,  in 
fact,  adherents  of  another  religion,  pretending  for  the 
sake  of  safety  to  be  members  of  the  Catholic  church. 
Yet  just  this  attitude  of  the  Albigensians  was  what 
made  it  so  difficult  to  distinguish  between  the  two 
movements,  and  has  caused  a  curious  confusion. 
The  Waldensians,  with  their  frank  and  open  opposi- 
tion to  certain  institutions  of  the  church,  were  taken 
by  many  to  be  the  more  dangerous,  and  were  there- 
fore attacked  and  persecuted  more  severely  than 
the  Albigensians,  who  knew  how  to  conform  them- 
selves to  the  outward  appearance  of  church  life. 


104  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

What  was  the  attitude  of  the  church  toward  these 
non-conformist  movements?  According  to  the  cur- 
rent theory  of  the  time  there  was  no  salvation  out- 
side the  church;  there  was  no  room  for  various  de- 
nominations. A  man  belonged  to  the  church  by  the 
very  fact  that  he  was  born  in  a  Catholic  commu- 
nity and  consequently  was  baptised.  He  had  to 
attend  the  church,  which  procured  for  him  eternal 
salvation,  and  if  he  neglected  his  duties,  he  was 
compelled  to  perform  them  by  the  church  authorities 
perhaps  with  the  help  of  the  secular  power.  A  man 
had  no  right  to  try  his  own  way  to  salvation;  he 
was  forced  to  use  the  means  provided  for  him  by 
the  church.  And  if  he  did  not  submit  he  was  to 
be  extinguished  in  order  that  his  devilish  spirit  of 
heresy  might  not  infect  others;  possibly  he  himself 
could  be  saved  by  being  deprived  of  his  sinful  body 
and  godless  life.  This  theory  gave  a  legal  sanction 
for  using  all  kinds  of  persuasion  by  force,  for  ap- 
plying cruel  tortures,  and  for  inflicting  death  by 
burning,  hanging,  beheading. 

But  the  church  found  that  the  movements  could 
not  be  mastered  in  this  way.  In  order  to  extirpate 
the  evil,  the  underlying  cause  had  to  be  rooted  out 
or  else  its  energy  turned  in  another  direction. 

The  first  method  was  tried  for  the  Bible.  It 
was  the  Bible  which  had  stirred  the  Waldensian 


BIBLE  PROHIBITION  FOR  LAYMEN        105 

and  similar  movements;  so  the  Bible  was  to  be  kept 
away  from  the  people.  When  asked  by  the  bishop 
of  Metz  what  he  ought  to  do  with  regard  to  the 
associations  of  Bible  readers  in  his  diocese,  Pope 
Innocent  III  replies  (1199)  that  of  course  the  study 
of  the  Bible  is  to  be  encouraged  among  the  clergy, 
but  that  all  laymen  are  to  be  kept  from  it,  the 
Bible  being  so  profound  in  its  mysteries  that  even 
scholars  sometimes  get  beyond  their  depth  and  are 
drowned.  At  the  end  of  his  letter  he  refers  to  the 
holiness  of  Mount  Sinai  as  expressed  in  Ex.  19  :  12, 
13:  "Take  heed  to  yourselves,  that  ye  go  not  up 
into  the  mount,  or  touch  the  border  of  it:  whosoever 
toucheth  the  mount  shall  be  surely  put  to  death: 
no  hand  shall  touch  him,  but  he  shall  surely  be 
stoned,  or  shot  through;  whether  it  be  beast  or  man, 
it  shall  not  live."  Likewise,  the  Pope  says,  if  a  lay- 
man touches  the  Bible  he  is  guilty  of  sacrilege  and 
ought  to  be  stoned  or  shot  through.  This  amounts 
to  a  general  prohibition  of  Bible  reading  for  the 
laity.  It  was  especially  against  the  translations 
of  the  Bible  into  the  vernacular  tongues  that  the 
church's  ordinances  were  directed.  In  the  later 
centuries  of  the  Middle  Ages  the  prohibitions  against 
Bible  reading  by  the  laity,  against  translating  the 
Bible,  and  against  selling  the  Bible  became  more 
frequent.  But  it  is  exactly  this  frequent  repetition 


106  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

which  makes  it  evident  that  the  prohibitions  were 
for  the  most  part  neglected.  The  best  known  is  a 
book  ordinance,  issued  by  Bishop  Berthold  of  Mainz 
in  1485-6,  in  which  the  bishop  forbids  the  printing 
and  selling  of  Bibles  unless  they  are  annotated  by 
approved  church  theologians,  the  Bibles  in  the  ver- 
nacular language  being  forbidden  altogether.  We 
know  of  a  Strassburg  printer  who  was  at  work 
printing  a  German  Bible  at  the  very  time  this  ordi- 
nance was  issued.  He  did  not  stop  printing,  he  only 
took  care  not  to  mention  his  name  in  the  book. 
Evidently  he  was  sure  that  he  could  find  a  sale  for 
his  book. 

There  was  another  way  of  overcoming  these  non- 
conformist tendencies,  and  it  proved  to  be  more 
successful;  the  church  tried  to  direct  them  and  put 
them  to  its  own  service.  A  good  example  of  this 
method  is  given  in  the  history  of  the  movement 
started  by  Saint  Francis  of  Assisi.  At  the  beginning 
this  was  exactly  like  the  Waldensian  movement 
that  spread  through  the  south  of  France  and  the 
north  of  Italy,  and  may  have  received  some  influ- 
ence from  it;  for  we  know  that  the  family  of  Saint 
Francis  had  French  relations  and  that  the  busi- 
ness of  his  father  brought  him  into  contact  with 
people  from  the  North.  But  the  conversion  of  Saint 
Francis  was  independent,  so  far  as  we  know.  It 


SAINT  FRANCIS  107 

again  was  caused  by  the  Bible.  Once  at  mass  he 
heard  the  lesson  from  the  Gospel,  and  was  struck  by 
the  same  words  which  had  struck  so  many  thought- 
ful Christians  before  him:  "If  thou  wouldest  be 
perfect,  go,  sell  that  which  thou  hast  and  give  to 
the  poor,  and  thou  shalt  have  treasure  in  heaven; 
and  come  follow  me."  He  at  once  throws  away  stick, 
bag,  purse,  shoes  to  become  the  true  follower  of  the 
poor  Jesus  and  of  his  poor  apostles,  to  be  himself 
the  apostle  of  the  gospel  of  poverty,  the  lover  of  his 
good  lady  Poverty,  as  he  likes  to  call  her.  When  the 
first  two  disciples  had  joined  him  he  takes  them  at 
daybreak  to  a  small  chapel,  takes  from  the  altar  the 
book  of  the  Gospels,  and  (so  the  legend  tells  us), 
opening  it  three  times,  every  time  comes  upon  the 
words  quoted  above.  Therefore  they  were  made  the 
basis  of  Saint  Francis'  rule  for  his  community,  to- 
gether with  the  instruction  given  to  Christ's  disciples 
in  Luke  9 : 1-6,  and  Matt.  16 : 24-27:  "  If  any  man 
would  come  after  me,  let  him  deny  himself  and  take 
up  his  cross  and  follow  me;  for  whosoever  would 
save  his  life  shall  lose  it,  and  whosoever  shall  lose 
his  life  for  my  sake  shall  find  it;  for  what  shall  a  man 
be  profited  if  he  shall  gain  the  whole  world  and  for- 
feit his  life,  or  what  shall  a  man  give  in  exchange  for 
his  life?"  It  was  the  desire  for  martyrdom  inspired 
by  this  passage  which  caused  Saint  Francis  to  go  to 


108  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

Palestine  and  preach  the  gospel  to  the  Moslems. 
In  his  retreat  at  Mount  Alverno  he  assiduously  read 
the  history  of  the  passion,  until  he  became  so  deeply 
impressed  by  it  that  it  had  a  corporal  effect  upon 
him.  He  became  stigmatised,  the  five  wounds  of 
Christ  appeared  on  his  body.  Saint  Francis  com- 
posed an  interesting  paraphrase  of  the  Lord's  Prayer, 
and  his  famous  hymn  to  the  sun  is  nothing  else 
than  a  beautiful  reproduction  of  the  148th  Psalm. 
When  dying  he  asked  for  John  13  to  be  read  to  him. 
Thus  all  his  life  is  accompanied  and  profoundly  af- 
fected by  the  Bible.  His  preaching  is  an  attempt 
at  bringing  the  pure  gospel  of  poverty  before  the 
people  as  simply  and  plainly  as  he  found  it  in  the 
Gospels  according  to  the  ascetic  understanding  of 
that  time. 

Now  this  would  have  turned  into  a  non-conform- 
ist movement,  like  that  of  the  Poor  of  Lyons  or  the 
Poor  of  Milan,  had  not  the  bishop  from  the  beginning 
protected  Saint  Francis  from  his  father's  wrath. 
Then  at  a  later  period  Cardinal  Ugolino  of  Ostia, 
known  from  his  later  life  as  Pope  Gregory  IX,  be- 
came a  protector  of  Saint  Francis  and  his  frater- 
nity and  managed  to  make  of  it  a  regular  order  in 
the  service  of  the  church.  It  was  not  Saint  Francis 
who  founded  the  order  of  the  Franciscans  or  Friars, 
but  some  of  his  first  pupils  and  friends,  and  certain 


FRANCIS,  ORDER  AND  THE  CHURCH     109 

high  dignitaries  of  the  church  abused  him  for  their 
own  purposes.  They  put  upon  Saint  Francis  and 
his  fraternity  the  whole  machinery  of  a  religious 
body  of  the  church.  There  was  to  be  a  general,  and 
numerous  provincials,  and  an  annual  meeting  of 
delegates;  there  were  monasteries  ruled  by  abbots 
or  guardians,  and  later  these  monasteries  received 
endowments.  Besides  the  monks  and  the  nuns 
who  formed  the  first  and  second  orders,  there  was 
a  third  order  of  Saint  Francis  including  those  lay- 
men who  wished  to  belong  to  the  order  and  enjoy 
its  religious  benefits  but  were  prevented  by  their 
families  from  entering  the  monastery.  This  comes 
very  near  to  the  ideal  put  forth  by  the  Poor  of 
Lyons,  but  the  organisation  kept  the  whole  body 
always  in  touch  with  the  church  and  its  authority. 
The  non-conformist  tendency  of  the  movement  had 
been  taken  out  and  it  had  been  turned  into  an  in- 
strument of  ecclesiastical  policy. 

To  be  sure,  the  spirit  of  Saint  Francis  reacted 
against  this  system,  inspired,  as  it  was,  more  by  ec- 
clesiastical shrewdness  than  by  Christian  piety.  The 
saint  himself  at  the  end  of  his  life  fell  out  with  his 
friends  and  especially  with  the  cardinal  protector. 
He  felt  himself  too  much  the  gallant  knight  of  his 
lady  Poverty  to  make  himself  a  tool  of  ecclesiastical 
policy.  He  detected  a  spirit  of  worldliness,  and  in 


110  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

his  last  will  he  warned  his  monks  not  to  yield  them- 
selves to  it.  Nevertheless,  the  cardinal  when  pro- 
moted to  be  Pope  ordered  Saint  Francis,  two  years 
after  his  death,  to  be  worshipped  as  a  saint,  in  a 
bull  of  canonisation  very  characteristic  for  the  style 
of  this  time,  filled  as  it  is  with  Biblical  allusions. 
"  From  this  bull,"  says  one  of  Saint  Francis'  recent 
biographers,  "you  learn  much  more  about  the 
history  of  David  and  the  Philistines  than  about 
the  life  of  Saint  Francis." 

But  the  spirit  of  Saint  Francis  reacted  even  more 
after  his  death.  One  part  of  his  followers  insisted 
upon  the  strict  rule  of  having  no  possessions  at  all; 
they  treated  the  other  part,  which  permitted  pos- 
sessions in  common,  as  a  set  of  worldly  apostates 
from  the  master's  ideals,  far  from  the  law  of  the 
gospel.  And  as  the  church  authorities  decided  in 
favour  of  the  less  strict  group,  the  spiritual  party, 
as  they  called  themselves,  openly  rebelled  against 
the  church,  while  the  emperor,  being  on  bad  terms 
with  the  Pope,  granted  them  his  protection.  From 
the  book  of  Revelation  they  deduced  that  the  offi- 
cial church  was  the  great  Babylon  and  the  Pope 
the  antichrist.  So  even  this  movement,  started  by 
the  Bible,  ended  partly  as  a  non-conformist  anti- 
ecclesiastical  undertaking. 

But  the  main  part  of  the  Franciscans,  or  Friars, 


THE  FRIARS  AT  THE  UNIVERSITIES       111 

as  they  are  called  from  the  Italian  /ran'  (brothers), 
kept  to  the  straight  line  of  ecclesiastical  discipline, 
and,  together  with  the  other  order  founded  nearly  at 
the  same  time  by  Saint  Dominic  the  Spaniard  for 
the  special  purpose  of  repelling  heresy,  they  became 
the  powerful  army  of  the  church  directed  against  all 
non-conformist  movements  such  as  the  Waldensians 
and  Albigensians.  Both  orders  made  themselves  at 
home  at  the  universities — at  this  period  Bologna  and 
Paris,  later  Oxford  and  Cambridge — and  soon  be- 
came very  influential.  They  had  rich  monasteries 
and. great  libraries,  and  made  Bible  study  their  fa- 
vourite subject.  It  is  a  remarkable  contrast  between 
Saint  Francis,  who,  having  only  one  book,  a  New 
Testament,  gives  this  away  in  order  to  help  a  poor 
widow,  and  the  great  stores  of  books  in  the  convents 
of  Saint  Francis*  fraternity.  The  saint  himself  did 
not  wish  his  monks  to  possess,  privately,  anything, 
not  even  a  Psalter,  and  now  they  owned  huge  Bibles 
and  commentaries  and  read  and  studied  like  any 
scholar  of  the  secular  clergy.  Saint  Francis  did 
not  wish  scholarship  among  his  brethren;  it  was  to 
him  something  worldly,  opposed  to  the  true  prin- 
ciples of  poverty.  Now  members  of  his  order  sat 
in  the  chairs  of  the  universities  and  were  among  the 
leading  teachers  of  the  church. 
It  is  due  to  the  Friars  that  Bible  study  is  again 


112  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

favoured  at  the  mediaeval  universities.  But  even 
these  Friars  were  taken  away  from  the  Bible  by 
the  current  tendency  toward  scholasticism.  Dog- 
matics, systematics,  dialectics  were  what  everybody 
wanted.  The  curriculum  of  a  student  of  theology 
required  first  a  training  in  Biblical  studies,  then  he 
had  to  go  to  attend  lectures  on  the  Sententia,  as  they 
called  the  text-book  for  systematics.  Likewise  the 
professor  was  bound  first  for  two  or  three  years  to 
teach  Biblical  matters  before  he  could  touch  upon 
systematics.  In  a  number  of  German  universities 
there  still  remain  some  traces  of  this  mediaeval  reg- 
ulation. But  we  are  told  that  both  professors  and 
students  hurried  on  to  get  rid  of  their  Bible  course 
as  quickly  as  possible  in  order  to  reach  the  higher 
level  of  dialectics  and  systematics.  The  Bible  among 
these  theologians  was  a  text-book  for  the  junior 
classes,  but  not  held  in  great  esteem  as  compared 
with  the  treasured  text-book  of  the  senior  classes, 
the  Liber  sententiarum. 

It  is  no  wonder  that  a  reaction  against  this  system 
of  scholasticism  was  stimulated  by  the  Bible  itself. 
Two  streams  we  may  distinguish,  both  starting 
within  the  boundaries  of  the  church  and  of  eccle- 
siastical theology,  both  inclined  to  overflow  these 
boundaries,  and  both  ending  in  non-conformist 
movements. 


MYSTICS  113 

One  stream  is  represented  by  the  mystics.  They 
are  pious  people,  led  by  high-church  preachers, 
Master  Eckhard,  Tauler,  Suso,  and  others.  These 
preachers  are  given  to  thorough  study  of  the  Bible. 
But  their  allegory  turns  out  to  be  far  different 
from  that  traditional  with  the  fathers.  They  care 
for  God  and  the  soul,  and  for  nothing  else  in  the 
world.  Their  favourite  text-book  is  Canticles:  the 
Christian  soul  as  the  bride  of  God  or  of  Christ. 
This  mysticism  sometimes  comes  into  collision  with 
the  sacramental  view  of  the  church.  Being  in  com- 
plete spiritual  union  with  God,  the  mystic  wished 
no  outward  sign;  piety  was  love,  not  creed.  The 
church  instinctively  felt  that  where  these  ideas  were 
prevailing  the  whole  ecclesiastical  system  was  in 
danger,  and  tried  to  stop  the  movement.  But  by 
this  very  opposition  the  movement  became  more 
anti-ecclesiastical  than  it  had  been  before.  The 
mystic  circles  withdrew  themselves  from  the  super- 
intendence of  the  church,  they  read  the  Bible,  they 
read  the  books  of  their  spiritual  fathers,  and  they 
became  more  and  more  sure  of  their  own  mystical 
theory  as  opposed  to  the  doctrine  of  the  church. 

The  second  stream  is  still  more  important.  Some 
theologians  reading  the  works  of  Saint  Augustine 
discovered  that  the  present  church  doctrine  was  not 
what  it  pretended  to  be,  the  true  representation  of 


114  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

the  doctrine  of  the  fathers,  that  there  was  a  large 
difference  between  the  real  tradition  of  the  old 
church  and  the  scholastic  doctrines  of  their  own 
time.  And,  as  they  went  on,  they  found  that  the 
Bible,  viewed  according  to  the  interpretation  of  the 
fathers,  did  not  support  the  theories  of  the  modern 
scholars.  So  they  departed  from  scholasticism  and 
built  their  own  systems  on  the  basis  of  the  Bible  as 
interpreted  by  Saint  Augustine.  It  was  a  general 
movement;  men  of  this  kind  were  found  in  many 
places.  It  is  difficult  to  say  how  far  they  were  de- 
pendent one  upon  another.  Some  were  quiet  men 
of  letters;  some  gained  high  positions,  like  John 
Gerson,  who  was  elected  chancellor  of  the  Univer- 
sity of  Paris;  others  were  aggressive  reformers. 
Mixing  in  politics,  these  became  leaders  of  an  anti- 
hierarchical  and  at  last  anti-ecclesiastical  movement. 
We  are  not  concerned  here  with  the  political  side 
of  the  question,  which  sometimes  seems  to  be  pre- 
dominant. Thus  in  England  John  Wycliffe  stirred 
up  a  long-lived  struggle.  Influenced  by  his  writ- 
ings John  Huss  in  Bohemia  entered  on  a  cam- 
paign for  true  Christianity  which  instead  led  to 
a  national  Czech  movement.  In  1409  the  German 
students  of  the  University  of  Prague  left  the  city 
and  moved  to  Leipzig.  After  the  martyrdom  of  their 
hero  at  Constance  in  1415  the  Hussites  became  an 


WYCLIFFE  AND  HUSS  115 

aggressive  national  and  militant  party,  constantly 
invading  and  devastating  Germany.  It  needed 
shrewd  politics  and  the  united  forces  of  the  empire 
to  keep  them  back  from  the  Silesian  and  Saxon 
frontiers. 

As  so  often  happens  in  history,  at  the  end  it  is 
hard  to  recognise  the  causes  which  have  led  to 
the  result.  In  spite  of  all  political  appearances  it  is 
true  that  it  was  really  the  Bible  which  stirred 
up  these  two  movements,  the  Wycliffite  and  the 
Hussite.  The  proof  is  given  in  the  fact  that  both 
Wycliffe  and  Huss  not  only  were  fond  of  reading 
the  Bible,  but  both  tried  also  to  make  their  people 
familiar  with  the  Bible  by  procuring  translations 
into  the  vernacular.  In  this  way  they  aimed  to 
provide  the  laity  with  the  evidence  of  this  one 
true  authority  and  so  to  protect  them  against  the 
adulteration  of  Christianity  due  to  scholasticism 
and  hierarchy. 

The  circulation  and  influence  of  the  English  ver- 
sion made  by  Wycliffe — or,  as  some  scholars  think, 
at  Wycliffe's  instance — is  shown  by  the  fact  that 
in  spite  of  persecution  and  destruction  one  hun- 
dred and  seventy  copies  are  still  preserved,  one 
hundred  and  forty  of  which  belong  to  a  second 
revision,  made  by  a  younger  friend  of  Wycliffe's, 
John  Purvey  (Plate  XIV).  It  was  the  first  English 


116  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

translation  of  the  whole  Bible,  a  good  specimen  of 
English,  but,  like  most  mediaeval  translations  based 
upon  the  Latin  Vulgate,  preserving  the  faults  of 
that  version  and  adding  others  of  its  own.  There 
are  numbers  of  Czech  Bibles  in  existence,  both  in 
manuscript  and  in  print,  but  not  yet  thoroughly 
studied.  It  is  remarkable  that  in  this  Hussite  Bible, 
as  well  as  in  some  German  translations  of  the  same 
time,  readings  are  found  which  go  back  to  the  very 
earliest  period  of  textual  development.  They  be- 
long to  the  southern  branch  of  French  tradition  and 
are  supplied  probably  by  Latin,  French,  or  Italian 
copies  which  came  from  Lyons  or  Milan.  This  is 
clear  evidence  that  it  was  through  the  Waldensians 
that  the  Bible  spread  in  the  vernacular  of  Italy,  Bo- 
hemia, and  Germany,  and  that  the  later  movements, 
while  originating  independently,  were  in  close  rela- 
tion with  the  earlier  ones.  It  is  the  Bible  which 
not  only  stirred  all  these  movements  but  connected 
them  one  with  the  other. 


ifnifoln 

tiO  WUfbit  ttttiitto 
ecu  nimir  tu  to  |»r  {Jpiyjwyr  ;>  war 
KI  matt™  up  m> 


pia«cGi»Otjw 
ft)jtp  £»  i  ntu 
fe» 


bfdjeorwa&tautuop  Oouit?«n 
»  IT  time  i>rui  fdfalpiif  o.'qin'T 

after  Mi*  \HOtouu.  uitututv  or  I   of  Mu 

fttriitP  1  1  01  UftPltgt  CO  gUW  m  JJ^frO'  IU 

iBr*.'R4pfttt!<tr  OMIOII  i  fprtiriipr  IpVi'utcu  aiiduutnr  ytuiffdtroftc 

of  pf  i-niMcef  oO-.'tuOIfffnTjr  I  Cu.4Mfl  lwf|n*UiCprttH4j"jM  »»<» 

tot»a«i  pat  I  d«f«cs|>rttir  nQ»u0«tp  tn  }it  HIT 
)in  QlMilau  not  tsytt  fa  tenifiilf<5i  OU  of  totyn 


tHyrmft'f  lywotn  rr&pt/ourp  i"  Cmptiatn) 


itiOa  yttt  nias  trixr  of  ii  no.-  ya 


{f  to  t}«u|t  t»  t«W-  WMtr  fK  to 
htoic  ktimc  yt  tinna  tu  uiotn 


I  fcrtJirf  firm 

l/flmiKruJ'  OJ(Hrtt)>f  mjnJffarfc! 


. 
i  it-  tt»8$  nifEfl  Uuotucn  toaUftuf  ^  *'. 


of  t'iMW.  ffojlbftc  tr  ts  wnrtf  m 

pctxxwrofi 

aofi  of  Oi>oi  Of  tttftUJ  ftttt*  a/ifl 

tiasttraipaJ^iidoudcmmBil'  IU*p<nwt  ratooccir  rnt&fuds 
OPIJI  ftwff  mmef  t;rum  (Biiftwir  wtofict- 

Of  Jttgffif 


pft  bpbfctdcit  in» 
Wiim*-ioo  «ce 
Urtifts  {x«i  m  trumt  ctoytf  t"1 


V  at  maii)  lieu 

W  ui  aw  fpmf 

uXU  cirtitOf  in  <  weittc  oitf 

J»|»«» 

won  u 


PLATE  XIV— WYCLIFFE'S  BIBLE 
(Brit.  Mus.  Egerton,  617-8) 

A  beautiful  copy  in  folio  of  the  first  edition;  it  is  interesting  to  compare  Eeerton, 

1171,  a  small  octavo  copy  of  the  second  edition,  written  for  private  use. 
From  "Fac-similes  of  Biblical  Manuscripts."     By  permission  of  the  Trustees  of 
the  British  Museum. 


VI 

THE  BIBLE  TRAINS  PRINTERS  AND  TRANS- 
LATORS (1450-1611) 

WE  have  been  led  in  the  last  chapters  far  back  into 
the  Middle  Ages.  Now  we  approach  the  great  time 
of  discoveries.  It  is  difficult  to  say  who  made  the 
most  important  discovery,  Columbus  crossing  the 
Atlantic  to  find  a  new  world,  in  which  a  new  civili- 
sation was  to  arise,  or  Gutenberg  inventing  the  art 
of  printing  and  thereby  revolutionising  the  world 
of  intellectual  life  and  consequently  the  history  of 
the  Bible. 

During  the  last  centuries  of  the  Middle  Ages  the 
Bible  had  been  much  copied.  At  the  University  of 
Paris  booksellers,  helped  by  some  scholars,  under- 
took to  issue  a  special  edition  for  the  benefit  of  the 
students.  This  Paris  edition,  easily  recognised  by 
its  fine  type  of  handwriting  and  its  blue  and  red 
decoration,  became  the  standard  Bible  text  for  men 
of  learning.  At  the  same  time  many  a  pious  mem- 
ber of  the  Fraternity  of  the  Common  Life,  which  was 
founded  by  Gerhard  de  Groot  at  Zutphen  (in  Hol- 
land), copied  the  Bible  in  his  miserable  cell  with 

117 


118  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

great  skill.  The  monasteries  began  to  have  large 
collections  of  Bible  editions.  There  were  large  copies 
consisting  of  four  or  eight  volumes  in  folio,  for  use 
in  chapel,  and  smaller  ones,  in  one  volume,  for  pri- 
vate reading.  We  know  of  a  regulation  made  for 
all  monasteries  of  the  Order  of  Saint  Augustine,  that 
in  the  catalogues  of  their  libraries  all  Bibles  should 
be  put  under  the  letter  A.  There  was  no  need  for 
such  a  regulation  in  the  pre-Carolingian  time,  when 
a  monastery  would  scarcely  have  one  complete  Bible. 
But  now  let  us  try  to  realise  what  it  meant  that 
each  copy  should  be  made  by  itself,  the  writer  paint- 
ing (as  we  may  say)  letter  by  letter,  and  this  through 
hundreds  and  thousands  of  pages.  The  copyists 
showed  wonderful  skill.  Some  of  these  manuscripts 
look  exactly  like  printed  books;  one  letter  is  just 
like  the  other;  no  slipping  of  the  pen !  Nevertheless 
it  was  inevitable  that  the  copyist  should  make  mis- 
takes from  time  to  time.  He  dropped  a  letter,  a 
word,  even  a  line;  unconsciously  he  changed  the 
order  of  the  words.  He  brought  in  something  which 
he  happened  to  have  in  his  mind.  When  he  was 
familiar  with  his  Bible,  some  parallel  confused  him. 
It  is  only  natural  that  in  copying  a  book  of  this  size 
even  the  best  copyist  should  make  some  hun- 
dreds of  blunders;  the  next  copyist  would  intro- 
duce other  hundreds,  sometimes  even  by  an  un- 


GROWING  CIRCULATION  1 19 

happy  attempt  at  correcting  the  blunders  of  the 
former.  So  it  went  on  till  in  the  end  the  text  be- 
came filled  with  mistakes.  Of  course,  there  was  a 
remedy.  After  having  finished  the  copy  the  writer 
himself  or  some  one  else  was  expected  to  compare 
it  carefully  with  the  original  and  correct  all  the 
blunders.  But  from  personal  experience  in  reading 
proofs  we  know  how  easily  a  real  blunder  escapes 
our  attention.  One  ought  to  go  over  a  proof-sheet 
three  times  at  least  in  order  to  avoid  all  mistakes. 
So  we  cannot  wonder  that  the  Bibles  copied  by 
hand  contained  errors,  and  considering  all  the  dif- 
ficulties it  is  surprising  that  the  copies  were  most 
of  them  so  nearly  correct. 

It  was  Johann  Gutenberg,  a  native  of  Mainz,  re- 
siding some  time  at  Strassburg  as  a  silversmith,  then 
again  returning  to  Mainz,  who  made  the  great  dis- 
covery that  several  copies  could  be  printed  at  once 
by  using  letters  cut  out  of  wood  or  metal.  People 
had  used  woodcuts  before  his  time.  Engraving 
large  blocks  of  wood  with  pictures  and  letters,  they 
printed  the  so-called  block-books,  as  a  cheap  sub- 
stitute for  illuminated  manuscripts.  Gutenberg's 
great  idea  was  that  instead  of  using  a  woodcut  block 
for  the  page  one  might  compose  a  page  by  using  sep- 
arate, movable  letters,  putting  them  together  accord- 


120  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

ing  to  the  present  need,  then  separating  them  and 
using  them  again.  We  are  not  interested  here  in 
the  technical  part  of  the  work;  imperfect  as  it  was, 
it  was  surely  a  great  advance.  Now  one  got  a  hun- 
dred copies,  two  hundred,  or  even  more  without 
any  difference  between  them.  When  the  proofs  had 
been  corrected  carefully  the  Bible  was  sure  to  have 
as  few  mistakes  as  possible;  and  if  the  printer  still 
found  some  errors,  he  could  easily  correct  them  for 
the  whole  edition  by  adding  a  printed  list  of  errata, 
or  necessary  corrections,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 
It  was  only  by  printing  that  uniformity  of  text 
became  possible. 

The  important  fact  for  our  present  investigation  is 
that  it  was  the  Bible  which  Gutenberg  chose  to  be  the 
first  printed  book.  This  fact  illustrates  the  estima- 
tion in  which  the  Bible  was  held.  It  shows  at  the 
same  time  the  demand  for  Bible  copies;  the  printer 
felt  sure  that  it  would  sell  and  pay.  It  was  an  enor- 
mous enterprise  to  put  the  fresh,  inexperienced  art 
of  printing  straightway  at  a  task  so  big  as  this.  It 
took  four  years  to  print  the  first  Bible,  from  1453 
to  1456.  While  working  at  it  Gutenberg  had  to 
try  some  smaller  things  which  would  bring  him 
money  immediately,  school-books,  letters  of  indul- 
gence, and  so  on,  but  his  main  care  was  given  to 
the  Bible.  It  contained  six  hundred  and  forty-one 


GUTENBERG'S  NEW  ART  121 

leaves,  with  two  columns  on  each  page,  and  forty- 
two  lines  in  each  column  (Plate  XV).  The  initials 
were  not  printed,  but  were  supposed  to  be  illumi- 
nated by  hand;  a  small  letter  was  printed  in  the 
free  space  to  indicate  what  kind  of  letter  the  illumi- 
nator had  to  paint.  Probably  not  more  than  one 
hundred  copies  were  printed,  a  third  part  of  them 
on  parchment.  Out  of  the  thirty-one  copies  which 
have  been  preserved,  or,  to  speak  more  accurately, 
are  known  as  such,  ten  are  luxuriously  printed  on 
parchment  and  illuminated,  each  in  a  different  way, 
but  all  very  fine  and  costly.  It  is  obvious  that 
Gutenberg  put  into  this  printing  not  only  a  great 
amount  of  labour  but  much  money,  too;  and  there 
was  no  assurance  that  it  would  come  in  again 
in  a  short  time.  Like  many  ingenious  discoverers 
and  inventors,  he  was  no  business  man;  he  was  al- 
ways in  need  of  money.  So  when  his  first  Bible  was 
not  yet  finished  one  of  his  creditors,  John  Fust,  of 
Mainz,  took  all  his  apparatus  from  him  and,  associat- 
ing himself  with  an  apprentice  of  Gutenberg's,  Peter 
Schoffer  by  name,  brought  the  printing  of  the  first 
Bible  to  completion,  thus  depriving  the  inventor  of 
the  financial  success  as  well  as  of  the  glory.  But 
Gutenberg  was  not  discouraged.  He  immediately 
began,  with  a  new  set  of  letters,  the  printing  of  a 
second  Bible,  containing  thirty-six  lines  in  each  col- 


122  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

umn  and  so  amounting  to  eight  hundred  and  eighty- 
one  leaves  in  size.  He  printed  it  in  the  years  1456 
to  1458.  Again  his  rivals,  Fust  and  Schoffer,  pub- 
lished, in  1462,  a  third  Bible,  called  sometimes  the 
Bible  of  Mainz.  It  has  forty-eight  lines  in  each 
column. 

Thus  the  printing  of  the  Bible  was  inaugurated. 
The  new  art  quickly  spread  all  over  Germany, 
and  printing-presses  were  established  at  Strassburg, 
Bamberg,  Nuremberg,  Basel,  Cologne,  Liibeck,  and 
many  other  places.  The  art  entered  France  and 
England  with  less  success,  the  government  in  both 
countries  being  partly  opposed  to  it  and  partly 
trying  to  make  it  a  royal  privilege.  Good  printers 
worked  at  Paris  and  Lyons.  The  most  splendid 
presses  were  at  Venice,  where  the  Doge  cham- 
pioned the  new  art  even  against  attacks  from  Rome. 
Before  the  year  1500  ninety-two  editions  of  the 
Latin  Bible  were  issued  by  these  various  presses, 
according  to  Mr.  Copinger,  who  possessed  the  larg- 
est collection  of  printed  Bibles.  (He  registers  four 
hundred  and  thirty-eight  editions  of  the  Latin  Bible 
during  the  sixteenth  century.)  In  addition  to  these 
we  have  a  great  number  of  printed  Bibles  in  the  ver- 
nacular of  Germany,  France,  Italy,  Bohemia,  and  so 
on.  There  was  a  sudden  outpouring  of  Bibles.  But 
we  must  not  overestimate  the  circulation.  These 


t  brtjrrio  ublumintto  fltoDiai  nour 
t  tqut  ulin  ao  ouo  puffa-hirta  rtra^ 
r.oiue  oumtaMtfomourqutfira 
Imtan  fmomo  a  Itpniapmia  nirct 
jrtribue  no  OifctnfiaL  Dirt  ttgo  ft  on 
tig  n  BuDiofo  miq;  fratft  mr  fnmo- 
16  ambigo  niultoa  rarc-qui  uti  inui- 
laurifuptrolio  maltnr  tonmunnt 
uiDtrt  prtdara  quam  Dtfcntrtt  Dr 
turfjulmto  magic  nuo  quainfirpu 


lilrrl 


inlrgt  ttnHniDolutaottuBriinltgpt 
ftufl  nuOitabit  Dit  at  norh.*H(f  tw 
tatncplignu  quoD  platatum  f3  fttuo 
i  orcurfue  aquaru :  qS  fcudy  fuu  Dabu 
'  in  tjE(uo.<£3ft  fcliu  nue  no  ttfiott :  i 
orania  qurcucp  fantt  pralpttabunir. 


Jfatuo  uit  qut  no 
abifttntpulioira* 
pmru:rtni_uiapr 
tatorum  no  Qtnr  : 
Kin  cattjr&ra  jrfh« 
- 


i  trio  quf  proint  uttuo  a  faar  ttnt- 
tta  no  tnurgut  itnpff  f  mBirio :  ntqj 
I  piidtiuto  in  taftlio  iuftoruX'i.uoni* 
I  am  noutt  to luuiuo  ma  uiftmj :  i int 
tiorura  pmb«.  j^Yaimue  ftimd 
i  uart  ftnnumjt  g«t9 :  tt  p^fi  rar- 
loitari  fimt  inania  Jj^aratfit 
itgro  tmt  ft  prinripra  rouranunt  m 
!  urul :  aoufu0  Diim  i  aDtifuf  inRu  ft^. 
jrapanfointfaro^ :  ijpmanf 
I  q  npbie  tugu  tpoij<i^iujpoi^ltr* 
I  lie itntttjh f08:i  ono fuWanabit  tpr. 
C^inr  lonurt  aQ  tos  in  tra  fua :  i  in 
nrcorr  fuo  totucuabit  to  wBTgo  au> 
mu  roHirut^  uira  tt|  ab  to  Oqjitt  fron 
raonttra  fantfcufi?:pDita8  prmprii 
I  riuwOorarane  oicit  ao  rot  filmo 


fiula  a  nu  tt  oabo  ribi  ptutre  tictrij  i- 
rattui  mi  :  tt  pjMtout  mu  nninoe 
tint.  •  t^re  too  i  uinjj  &TTCJ  1  1  MO 
q'i  oae  nguli  to&togto  too.  Hit  nut 
rrgro  lutriiigttt  :  ttupuniui  q  mDira> 
riettvra,"*  mattoaoiriuiott:ttt| 
ultatt  n  nl  tranort'-irip;nticnDitt  Oi-- 
fnplinoin  :  nt  quapo  irafcatur  ttmn< 
nuo  i  pntane  pt  uia  iuSa.  uro  f? 
arfnu  in  brtui  ica  nuo  :  bran  omnre 


.  >  ralnplitati  uint  qui 
/x«*LJ^nibulat  n»  ^raulri  iofurgut  ao* 
UTjlimjrar.fliuInDiQicanirariufc: 

finf  fufrrptxn  rat*  co ;  Qloua  ntta  i  tj_  • 
alraeraput  ratu.C^>ott  rata  06  Do 
nrinii  riaraam :  i  tf  auuiuit  rat  tt  rao- 


fora  :  "»  ttfurtm  qwa  Dtis  fuftrptt  rat. 


no  rat  :  trurgt  Bfu  faluu  rat  foe  Drue 
ratu8.1i«>uoTuaraw  nrufftSt  oriita 
aDufamto  mirijt  fint  tauffl  :  Omtre 
poatoru  tomuiaiXL)otnini  tft  JaP  : 
rtlupttpopufu  tuura  btntoubouo, 
]n  finnii  iiif.iniuntDiu^ 


tufiirir  raw  :  i  tnbulaaont  ofla 
ratt}i.<  flifent  ran  :  IT  ff  auoi  a* 


quonia  rainficauu  ono  fadurafuu  : 
Dna  traupm  rat  ru  riamauao  aQ  nl 
^taunnini  tt  oolitt  pmao  :  qut  Di* 
nn0  in  toitnbuo  urQne  in  tub  ilibuo 
' 


famfiriu  iuraw  i  tpraff  hi  mramo  : 
roulti  Dinint  q"e  o&mDu  n 


PLATE  XV— GUTENBERG'S  FIRST  BIBLE 
(42  lines,  Mainz,  1453-1456) 

Copy  at    Leipzig,  on  parchment,   beautifully  illuminated.     The    capitals    are 

painted  by  hand,  but  indicated  by  small  printed  letters. 

From  "Erfindung  der  Buchdruckerkunst."     Published  by  Velhagen  &  Klasing, 
Bielefeld,  Germany. 


BIBLE  PRINTING  123 

editions  contained  scarcely  more  than  two  hundred 
copies  each;  they  were  most  of  them  in  large  folio, 
very  unwieldy,  and  the  price  was  enormous,  though, 
of  course,  not  so  high  as  it  is  now,  when  for  one 
copy  of  Gutenberg's  first  Bible  $20,000  is  paid. 
The  Bible  was  not  available  for  the  average  man. 
We  know  of  scholars  copying  for  themselves  the 
Bible  or  the  New  Testament  from  a  printed  Bible. 
The  clergy  were  rather  opposed  to  this  printing. 
They  did  not  in  the  least  encourage  the  printers; 
on  the  contrary,  they  tried  to  cause  as  many  dif- 
ficulties as  possible.  Therefore  the  circulation  was 
a  limited  one.  Copies  were  bought  by  churches 
for  their  services,  by  princes,  and  by  very  rich 
merchants,  as  to-day  a  splendid  work  is  bought 
more  as  a  luxury  than  as  something  for  daily  use. 
One  cannot  say  that  at  this  period  the  Bible,  even 
by  printing,  acquired  a  circulation  among  the  peo- 
pie. 

This  was  accomplished  only  through  the  Refor- 
mation. It  was  Luther's  German  translation  which 
made  the  printed  Bible  popular  and  caused  a  num- 
ber of  similar  translations.  In  order  to  make  the 
Bible  what  it  was  destined  to  be,  the  book  of  the 
people,  the  printer  and  the  translator  had  to  work 
together. 

In  former  times  many  Protestants  held  the  view 


124  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

that  Luther  rediscovered  the  Bible,  which  had  been 
almost  entirely  forgotten.  They  thought  that  there 
had  been  a  meagre  transmission  of  the  Bible  and 
no  translation  into  the  vernacular  at  all.  This 
view,  of  course,  is  untenable.  We  have  seen 
what  a  circulation  the  Bible  had  in  the  last  cen- 
tury before  the  Reformation,  and  that  it  had  been 
translated  into  almost  every  vernacular.  Never- 
theless, Luther's  version  is  a  landmark  in  the  his- 
tory of  translation;  it  marks  a  new  period  and  rep- 
resents the  beginning  of  a  new  sort  of  translation. 
In  order  to  realise  this,  let  us  look  back  over  the 
former  history  of  translations.  In  the  first  period 
we  found  the  Bible  translated  from  the  Greek  into 
Latin,  Syriac,  Coptic;  in  the  next  period  Gothic, 
Armenian,  Georgian,  Libyan,  and  Ethiopic  were 
added,  not  to  mention  the  several  revisions  of  the 
former  translations.  About  600  A.  D.  the  Bible  was 
known  in  eight  languages;  in  each  of  them  there  had 
been  several  attempts  at  translating.  There  were 
different  dialects,  too;  in  Coptic  no  less  than  five. 
The  spread  of  Christianity  in  the  next  period  is  shown 
by  the  fact  that  the  Bible  is  translated — and  this 
again  several  times — into  Arabic  and  Slavonic  from 
the  Greek,  and  into  German,  Anglo-Saxon,  Celtic, 
and  French  from  the  Latin — rather,  I  should  say, 
parts  of  the  Bible,  for  it  was  only  parts  which  people 


FORMER  TRANSLATIONS  125 

at  this  period  tried  to  translate.  We  hear  of  a  Gos- 
pel, of  a  Psalter,  of  one  or  another  book  translated 
into  the  vernacular.  Only  when  stimulated  by  the 
popular  movements  of  the  next  period,  as  we  have 
seen  in  the  fifth  chapter,  was  the  work  of  translating 
into  the  vernacular  prosecuted  on  a  larger  scale;  from 
the  thirteenth  century  on  we  may  speak  of  Bibles 
in  the  vernacular.  Beginning  in  the  southeast  of 
France,  the  tendency  spread  over  Italy  and  Germany. 
We  can  still  trace  the  influence  of  the  French  Wal- 
densian  Bible  in  the  earliest  Italian  translations  and 
also  in  some  of  the  German  ones.  Another  circle 
is  defined  by  the  northern  French  translation,  which 
influenced  the  Flemish  and  Dutch  and  possibly  even 
the  Scandinavian.  All  these  are  based  not  so  much 
upon  the  Bible  itself  as  on  a  rearrangement  known 
as  the  Historical  Bible,  telling  the  stories  and  omit- 
ting the  doctrinal  portions.  A  new  start  was  made 
in  England  by  Wycliffe,  and  this  caused  the  Bo- 
hemian translation  into  Czech,  which  was  again  in- 
fluenced by  the  Waldensian  Bible.  It  is  like  a  net 
thrown  all  over  Europe.  We  may  count  more  than 
a  dozen  languages,  many  of  them  represented  by 
different  dialects  and  by  several  separate  renditions, 
which  were  added  to  the  eight  languages  of  the 
former  periods.  The  culmination  came  in  the  fif- 
teenth century,  when  everywhere  fresh  translations 


126  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

were  attempted.  In  Germany  more  than  forty  dif- 
ferent types  of  translation  can  be  counted,  and 
one  of  them,  containing  the  whole  Bible,  was  printed 
fourteen  times  before  the  period  of  the  Reformation 
(Plate  XVI).  There  was  only  one  translation,  how- 
ever, with  a  value  of  its  own,  and  that  was  the 
Spanish,  for  this  was  made  from  the  Hebrew  Old 
Testament  by  the  help  of  some  Spanish  Jews.  Both 
the  king  of  Spain  and  the  high  clergy  showed  at  that 
time  a  remarkable  breadth  of  view  in  trying  to  get  a 
trustworthy  translation.  All  other  versions  in  the 
West  were  based  upon  the  Latin  Vulgate  as  the 
recognised  Bible  of  the  church,  and  they  were  made 
with  more  devotion  than  knowledge.  The  trans- 
lators usually  did  not  know  Latin  well  nor  were 
they  masters  of  their  own  language.  They  trans- 
lated word  for  word,  and  the  result  was  sometimes 
strange.  It  is  of  no  great  importance  that,  not 
recognising  in  "Tertius"  and  "Quartus"  proper 
names,  one  of  these  translators  said  "the  third"  and 
"  the  fourth."  It  was  worse  when  another  explained 
"encaenia"  in  John  10  :  22,  the  feast  of  dedication, 
as  meaning  "wedding,"  or  declared  the  words  in 
Matt.  27  :  46,  "Eli,  Eli,"  to  be  Greek.  Sometimes 
the  translation  resulted  in  pure  nonsense,  and  even 
where  it  made  sense,  it  was  difficult  and  often  far 
from  the  true  meaning.  Now  humanism  insisted 


rpTu'rim  •  firrvtarMiMf  fr*t«h  Ineincr  b6mnn 
bufauno.  .  *,brr  In  irrm  m.ttrl  (HSnB*  ben-  JUU.B. 
vn5  rr  rrfig  xn  pf'trrr  in  fiuinrbntt  .  Xbrr  vor 

Mbrr.  Vbrr  a!U»  vol*  m*  n»  Auol^tit  i  «-rfx 
>-n»  alfo  fruit  alic  pf  *lm  bc.-rn  »»u,»«  an  *:  ,»l, 
C-vw-t  VnONrallrrab  wir  ffffpnxboi  Mm 
««»&«•  vnS.ljrn)  -ion  tin*,  vrt 


r:>  funchjrt.vn.i).  mag; 


ftin  grorft  tilt  ftilm  bcnrn  &uut>»  cin 
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au.bcr  ul.t>.»  ,fr  Scipft 
ifr,6g«*t,lt  vnBrus 


jrom  vnkp 

Vn»  alfo  fti 


gracfc  ^r  alter  inii^fr  vnt 
nB  bin  g-iaf  fi  Mr  humgt  tu 


I  vn»  tntin  wingw  babm  bcftpt  cm  p(»li»r.>Hi  wo 
I  iff  Orr  e«r  men  farntn  b«t  grtun^jitt  vniigtftgtt 
i  tmr.  1)tr  brrn  allcr  bcrrtn  fri'lxr  hir  mith  cr: 
bin.  Cr  f'*t  grfdnt  cintn  «nyrf  im»  b*t  mid)  gt: 
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MIOTV.  V«6  tr  bar  mich  gtfjlbtt  mitt  W  f«tbm 
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grafc-  vn»  Drm  brrrtn  mi  nit  cm  trulgtuitlcn  m 
in.>fabin  wfgrg-Jngrn  vn»  bin  mKn-ijm  tumcn 
ton  br?3m  pbilifno.  \brr  >*  bat.  jrofgti»3«i  Ms 
fdwort  w>n  («intr  fHxpi;»nS  bib  im  .bgrfcblag* 
f«m  bjubn  .  Vi»  «lf  j  htb  i<b  ^momm  b*t  Ufar 
•OS  Die  fcbinS:  von  Cm  hinorm  von  ifr*M. 


tw  fAnanrt  vnd  nt'cbttn 
UH  nf  fitm  MA  txr  Vfiwufc 

f  tin  onilc  .ft 

ncr  tc  bm-«d>tt  cr  Ma»  vnc 
________ 

ybltnm  brf  *  *bl»f  an-  wdlTcr  :  A««  fiin  wbcbn- 
gibt  ta  feim  >.pt.  Vn9  fan  Uttb»n*«ufr  mt 
ng  »it  ir  tfi«  »i<  we 

mt  «lfo  rut  .If  0: 

wins  vew&rlh  von  t«m  jnrldo  Mr  crt.  • 
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.  WmnBrrbnr 
Sir  vn 


j«  in  m  frim  wrns  WM,  bnrtbt  »(.  in  f,inrr  iobb,.t 
\V*n-  «cb  bin  Brffbicte.m  dunig  ^n  ,m  vb[,  c,  J 
ton  bntgm  brr^t  :  jtptmgcn  fern  qtbx.T)irh:,rt 
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(xrbnTttwtmt  irbt  mtrb  n-{umt  »nt  ir  wtxrtt 
*on  arm  mbtm  m$.  $otr  bhnnt  in  frtm  Uitjtln 


brir  wmunb  feint  (y 

michbrrrtbmt  :  mLp  ke 

tn>rb.a>im?(prrrf»mif.m,infirt|:tri(r 

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mtin  mrpbubrr:  mnn  wonnigh*  vfi  »u  trbicbfr 
mtin  (unbr.O9it  mrintr  (tym  nrff  irb  id  *m  hr.-: 
»m  :  vn»<r  trhjit  mi*  von  him  bnl^.n  t*rg.  1rf> 
frbktf  vn»micbf<blcfftrt:vn»  icbftun?  *>f  <rmn 
Orihrn-Sctmtpbtcnij  mirb.l<b  v&rrbr  nic  Mufrnt 
to  volrtw  6r»  w»  mirb  vmbjibt  •  o  brir  mnn  orrt 
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PLATE  XVI— FIRST  GERMAN  BIBLE 

Printed  at  Strassburg  by  G.  Mentell  in  1466:  the  progress  in  printing  made  in 

these  ten  years  is  remarkable. 

Entnommen  aus  W.  Walthers  "Deutsche  Bibeliiberset/.ung  des  Mittelalters." 
Verlag  von  Hellmuth  Wollermann  in  Braunschweig. 


LUTHER'S  TRANSLATION  127 

upon  going  back  to  the  original  languages.  Eras- 
mus, in  1516,  published  the  first  edition  of  the 
New  Testament  in  Greek.  We  see  how  Luther, 
at  this  time  professor  at  the  University  of  Witten- 
berg, lecturing  upon  Romans  when  this  edition 
came  into  his  hands,  was  impressed  by  this  new 
source  of  information.  He  eagerly  set  himself 
to  learn  Greek  with  the  help  of  his  friend  Melanch- 
thon,  and  so  he  was  prepared  for  the  great  task 
of  translating  the  New  Testament  directly  out 
of  the  Greek  into  German.  It  was  during  his 
exile  in  the  Wartburg  that  he  found  the  neces- 
sary time  to  make  this  translation.  It  appeared 
in  print  in  September,  1522,  and  it  is  astonish- 
ing in  how  short  a  time  this  New  Testament  cir- 
culated all  through  Germany.  It  was  reprinted 
everywhere,  and  often  very  carelessly,  so  that  Lu- 
ther had  to  complain  against  the  printers  as  falsify- 
ing his  translation.  He  himself  did  not  take  any 
payment  for  his  work;  he  wanted  the  publishers  to 
sell  it  as  cheaply  as  possible.  And  it  was  a  master- 
piece, not  only  for  the  beauty  of  the  language,  which 
was  the  best  and  most  popular  German  that  had 
ever  been  written  but  also  in  the  way  Luther 
translated,  giving  not  the  single  words  but  the 
meaning  of  the  sentences,  not  transferring  from 
one  vocabulary  to  the  other  but  transmuting  (if  one 


128  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

may  say  so)  the  whole  expression  of  thought  from 
Greek  into  German.  The  Bible  became  a  German 
book;  one  hardly  feels  that  he  is  reading  a  trans- 
lation. Luther  had  more  trouble  with  the  Old  Tes- 
tament. In  order  to  master  the  Hebrew  he  had  to 
rely  on  friends;  he  even  asked  some  Jewish  rabbis 
to  join  their  meetings.  He  tells  us  that  they  often 
had  to  look  for  a  single  word  three  or  four  weeks; 
that  in  particular  Job  was  so  difficult  that  they 
scarcely  finished  three  lines  in  four  days.  The  Pen- 
tateuch was  ready  in  the  year  1523;  then  year  after 
year  the  work  went  on.  The  prophets  were  not 
finished  until  1532,  and  in  1534  the  first  complete 
Bible  was  issued.  The  work  was  highly  praised  by 
Luther's  friends  and  unduly  criticised  by  his  an- 
tagonists. He  himself  replied  sharply  to  such 
criticism,  and  he  had  a  right  to  do  so  because  the 
attempts  made  by  Eck  and  Emser,  the  champions  of 
Roman  Catholicism,  to  translate  the  Bible  them- 
selves were  feeble  and  betrayed  much  dependence 
on  Luther's  translation,  which  they  had  so  severely 
criticised.  Luther  himself  never  felt  satisfied  with 
his  own  work  and  always  tried  to  improve  it.  At 
two  different  periods  he  held  meetings  with  his 
friends  for  the  purpose  of  revising  the  Bible.  The 
records  of  these  meetings  of  the  committee  for  the 
revision  of  the  Bible  (if  one  may  call  it  so)  have 


ITS  INFLUENCE  ON  LITERATURE         129 

come  down  to  us,  and  it  is  highly  interesting  to  see 
how  carefully  they  discussed  every  word  and  how 
it  is  always  Luther  himself  who  at  last  finds  the 
most  apt  expression. 

It  is  a  great  privilege  of  the  German  nation 
that  it  received  this  excellent  Bible  at  the  very 
beginning  of  the  new  era.  The  German  language 
is  moulded  by  this  Bible.  In  Luther's  time  the  dia- 
lects still  prevailed.  Luther's  Bible  had  to  be 
translated  into  the  dialect  of  lower  Germany.  The 
south  of  Germany  and  Switzerland  had  quite  an- 
other dialect.  The  Zurich  reformers,  in  1529,  pub- 
lished a  Bible  in  this  dialect,  translating  from  Luther's 
Bible  as  far  as  it  existed  at  this  time  and  providing 
for  the  rest  a  translation  of  their  own.  It  is  un- 
questionably due  to  Luther's  Bible  that  the  Germans 
have  now  one  language  for  all  literary  purposes. 
The  German  classic  writers  Herder,  Wieland,  Klop- 
stock,  Lessing,  Schiller,  Goethe  were  all  trained  from 
their  childhood  by  the  language  of  this  Bible.  Even 
now  there  is  a  remarkable  difference  in  style  be- 
tween authors  of  Protestant  and  of  Roman  Catholic 
origin  in  Germany.  In  the  easy  and  fluent  lan- 
guage of  the  former  we  see  the  influence  of  Luther 
and  Goethe,  whereas  the  latter  often  show  a  cer- 
tain stiffness  and  a  greater  number  of  provincial- 
isms. The  attempts  to  translate  the  Bible  inde- 


130  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

pendently  of  Luther  have  never  succeeded  in 
gaining  any  large  circulation,  although  there  have 
been  many  such,  not  only  from  the  Roman  Cath- 
olic side  but  also  from  Protestants.  A  famous 
one  is  the  so-called  Berleburg  Bible,  by  certain 
mystics,  published  in  1726-42  in  eight  volumes.  In 
the  nineteenth  century  scholars  undertook  to  give 
more  scientific  and  more  exact  translations,  but, 
valuable  as  these  may  be  for  scholarly  purposes,  the 
German  people  will  never  abandon  its  classic  Bible. 
It  is  difficult  even  to  introduce  a  revision.  There 
was  a  revision  some  twenty  years  ago,  but  in  this 
Luther's  text  was  retouched  and  altered  only  at 
a  very  few  points,  most  of  the  corrections  intro- 
duced by  the  revision  committee  being  rather 
restitutions  of  Luther's  original  renderings,  which 
had  been  badly  "improved"  by  former  printers. 
It  is  remarkable  that  even  the  printed  Bible  never 
stands  still,  but  is  always  changing,  the  printers 
acting  as  the  copyists  did  in  former  times.  The 
copies  of  the  revised  text  printed  at  Stuttgart  differ 
slightly  from  the  copies  printed  at  Halle  and  Ber- 
lin, to  mention  three  of  the  modern  centres  of  Ger- 
man Bible  printing. 

Luther's  translation  was  the  signal  for  a  general 
movement  in  this  direction.  It  is  not  so  much 
translating  the  Bible  into  new  languages — only  a 


OTHER  GERMAN  TRANSLATIONS          131 

few  which  had  no  Bible  before  were  added  to  the  list 
given  above — as  rather  the  making  of  new  transla- 
tions in  all  languages  of  the  Christian  world  as  far 
as  this  was  influenced  by  the  Reformation.  Of 
course  some  of  these  translations  were  inspired  by 
humanism  more  than  by  the  spirit  of  the  Reforma- 
tion. The  humanists  abhorred  the  vulgarity  of  the 
monkish  Latin,  and  they  extended  their  aversion 
to  the  official  Bible  of  the  church,  the  Vulgate  of 
Saint  Jerome;  therefore  they  tried  to  translate  the 
Bible  into  what  they  thought  to  be  Ciceronian  Latin, 
and  some  of  them  translated  this  again  into  French 
or  German.  But  most  of  the  translators  were  sim- 
ply following  Luther's  model;  nay,  they  used 
Luther's  translation  even  more  than  the  original. 
King  Christian  III  of  Denmark  gave  orders  that 
the  translators  should  follow  Luther's  version  as 
closely  as  possible.  In  this  way  the  Dutch,  the 
Danish,  the  Swedish,  the  Finnish,  the  Lettish,  and 
the  Lithuanian  Bibles  were  more  or  less  influenced 
by  or  even  based  upon  Luther's. 

It  is  different  with  the  English  and  the  French 
Bible.  Wycliffe's  translation  never  had  been  printed. 
William  Tindale,  a  pupil  of  Erasmus,  translated 
the  New  Testament  and  parts  of  the  Old  during  his 
exile  in  Germany  and  Holland,  whither  he  had  gone 
under  Henry  VIII  because,  as  he  says,  there  was 


132  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

no  place  to  translate  the  New  Testament  in  all 
England.  Printed  copies  of  them  were  brought  to 
England,  but  most  of  them  were  confiscated  and 
destroyed.  Once  again  the  Bible  was  burned, 
but  this  time  by  the  Christian  king  in  agreement 
with  the  bishops  of  the  English  church;  and  with 
the  Bible  suffered  many  of  its  zealous  readers. 
Tindale  himself  died  a  martyr  for  his  faith  and  his 
Bible  in  October,  1536,  at  the  hands  of  the  imperial 
authorities  in  Flanders.  But  the  work  of  Bible 
translation  went  on,  nevertheless,  and  Henry  VIII 
was  still  on  the  throne  when  the  Bible  gained  the 
victory.  Miles  Coverdale,  who  had  undertaken  an- 
other translation,  issued  the  year  before  Tindale's 
death,  failed  to  get  royal  sanction  for  its  publica- 
tion, but  the  book  was  not  suppressed.  John  Rogers, 
a  friend  of  Tindale's,  the  year  after  his  death,  under 
the  assumed  name  of  Thomas  Matthew,  published 
a  Bible,  chiefly  made  up  from  Tindale's  and  Cover- 
dale's  work.  Through  Crumwell's  mediation  Cran- 
mer  secured  the  king's  permission  to  sell  this 
Bible  in  the  realm.  But  the  convocation  was  not 
satisfied  with  it.  It  asked  for  another  translation, 
and  therefore  the  so-called  Great  Bible  was  pub- 
lished in  1539,  Coverdale  revising  his  former  work 
under  the  direction  of  Crumwell,  Cranmer,  and 
others.  This  Great  Bible  was  ordered  by  a  royal 


THE  ENGLISH  BIBLE  133 

warrant  to  be  exhibited  in  all  parish  churches;  copies 
were  fastened  to  the  pulpits  by  means  of  chains,  and 
the  public  was  allowed  to  read  them  "with  discre- 
tion, honest  intent,  charity,  reverence,  quiet  beha- 
viour," as  is  said  in  the  admonition  published  by 
Bishop  Bonner.  This  happened  in  the  last  years  of 
Henry  VIII.  Under  Queen  Mary — bloody  Mary, 
as  she  was  called — the  printing  of  Bibles  was  stopped, 
but  the  exiles  who  went  to  Geneva  undertook 
a  new  revision,  which  was  much  more  radical  and 
had  the  privilege  of  bearing  an  introductory  letter 
by  Calvin  himself.  At  the  very  moment  of  Queen 
Elizabeth's  coronation,  among  other  prisoners  (ac- 
cording to  the  expression  of  one  of  her  courtiers)  the 
four  evangelists  and  Saint  Paul  were  released,  hav- 
ing been  long  shut  up  in  an  unknown  tongue,  as  it 
were  in  prison.  The  Great  Bible  was  revised  by 
some  of  the  bishops  under  direction  of  Archbishop 
Parker,  who  did  not  shrink  from  using  improve- 
ments from  the  Geneva  Bible.  This  Bishops' 
Bible,  published  in  1568,  was  the  official  one,  but 
the  Geneva  Bible  was  far  more  popular,  while  the 
Roman  Catholics  made  a  translation  of  their  own, 
printed  in  France  at  Rheims  and  Douai.  The  rivalry 
between  the  Bishops'  Bible  and  the  Geneva  Bible 
was  confusing.  Therefore,  in  order  to  overcome  it, 
King  James,  in  1604,  appointed  a  committee  for  the 


134  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

revision  of  the  Bible,  consisting  of  about  fifty 
members,  and  divided  into  six  groups,  two  of  which 
met  at  Westminster,  Oxford,  and  Cambridge  respec- 
tively. They  did  excellent  work,  the  result  of  which 
was  published  in  1611  and  is  known  as  the  Author- 
ised Version.  It  is  in  this  version  that  the  En- 
glish translation  attained  its  highest  excellence.  It 
is  this  form  which  gained  the  largest  circulation  and 
the  greatest  popularity  among  all  English-speaking 
peoples.  It  still  survives  the  recent  attempt  at  re- 
vision, which  was  made  by  an  English  and  an  Ameri- 
can committee,  both  working  on  the  same  principles 
and  in  constant  communication  with  one  another. 
It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  the  final  corrections 
were  cabled  from  England  to  America  in  order  to 
procure  a  simultaneous  publication  on  both  sides  of 
the  Atlantic.  Here  again,  as  in  the  German  revi- 
sion, the  two  issues  are  not  identical.  It  marks, 
however,  a  clear  distinction  between  the  German 
and  the  English  Bible  that  the  former  reached  its 
final  form  at  its  very  beginning,  whereas  the  latter 
did  not  achieve  this  result  until  a  hundred  years 
later.  The  Bible  of  Luther  was  creative  of  the 
German  language,  as  we  have  seen,  while  the  En- 
glish Bible  is  rather  a  product  of  the  period  of  high- 
est literary  culture  in  England.  Luther  produced 
Goethe.  Shakespeare  (d.  April  23,  1616)  is  prac- 


THE  FRENCH  BIBLE  135 

tically  contemporaneous  with  the  Authorised  Ver- 
sion. 

The  development  of  the  French  Bible  is  still  more 
slow  and  varied.  There  was  a  pre-Reformation 
translation,  printed  several  times,  at  Lyons  and  at 
Paris;  but  it  was  of  a  purely  mediaeval  character. 
Then  a  humanist,  Jacques  Lefevres  d'Etaples  (Faber 
Stapulensis,  d.  1536),  undertook  a  new  French  trans- 
lation from  the  Vulgate.  The  first  French  Bible 
translated  from  the  original  Hebrew  and  Greek  was 
published  in  1535  by  Peter  Robert  Olivetan,  a  cousin 
of  Calvin.  The  author  himself,  and  Calvin,  and 
others  corrected  and  improved  it  from  time  to  time, 
and  nearly  every  twenty  or  thirty  years  a  new 
editor  would  try  to  revise  it.  In  this  series  of  revi- 
sions one  of  the  most  successful  was  that  of  Fre- 
deric Ostervald  of  Neuchatel,  in  1744.  But  the 
process  is  still  going  on,  French  and  Swiss  theologians 
vying  one  with  another  in  fair  competition.  More- 
over, the  Protestant  translation  found  many  rivals 
in  the  work  of  Roman  Catholics,  especially  in  the 
great  period  of  French  literature  in  the  reign  of 
Louis  XIV.  Some  of  these  translators,  for  example 
Bossuet,  aimed  at  making  the  style  of  their  transla- 
tion as  elegant  as  possible,  while  others,  under  the 
influence  of  Port  Royal,  paraphrased  the  text  with 
a  view  rather  to  clearness.  None  of  these  versions 


136  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

had  real  success;  none  has  become  final.  France  still 
suffers  from  the  lack  of  a  classic  form  for  its  Bible. 

The  attitude  of  a  nation  toward  its  Bible  is  largely 
determined  by  the  development  of  the  translation. 
It  is  obvious  that  the  Germans  hold  to  Luther's 
Bible  even  more  insistently  than  the  English  do  to 
their  Authorised  Version,  and  that  in  France  there 
is  an  open  field  for  every  fresh  attempt  at  revising 
and  translating.  The  nation  has  not  become  united 
with  its  Bible,  and,  as  regards  language,  the  famous 
"  Dictionnaire  de  I'Academie,"  aiming  at  a  standard 
of  literary  uniformity,  is  but  a  poor  and  artificial 
substitute  for  the  influence  exercised  in  a  living 
and  natural  way  by  the  Bible. 

It  is  not  our  task  here  to  trace  the  history  of 
translations  in  Italy,  Spain,  Portugal,  Hungary, 
and  elsewhere.  It  is  to  a  large  extent  a  history  of 
enthusiasm,  devotion,  and  martyrdom,  and  at  the 
same  time  of  failure  and  oppression.  Wherever  the 
so-called  Counter-Reformation,  started  by  the  Jes- 
uits, gained  hold  of  the  people,  the  vernacular  was 
suppressed  and  the  Bible  kept  from  the  laity.  So 
eager  were  the  Jesuits  to  destroy  the  authority  of 
the  Bible — the  paper  pope  of  the  Protestants,  as 
they  contemptuously  called  it — that  they  even  did 
not  refrain  from  criticising  its  genuineness  and  his- 
torical value. 


OTHER  TRANSLATIONS  137 

To  sum  up :  it  was  the  Bible  which  trained  printers 
and  translators  and  thereby  made  a  noble  contri- 
bution to  modern  civilisation  and  literature;  on  the 
other  hand,  it  was  printing  and  translating  which 
made  it  possible  for  the  Bible  to  become  the  popu- 
lar book  that  ruled  daily  life. 


VII 

THE  BIBLE  RULES  DAILY  LIFE  (1550-1850) 

THE  Reformation  gave  the  Bible  a  new  position — 
not  that  there  had  been  no  Bible  before,  nor  that 
the  Bible  had  had  no  influence.  We  have  seen 
that  there  were  numbers  of  Bibles,  in  Latin  as 
well  as  in  the  vernacular,  and  that  the  Bible  had 
been  one  of  the  foundations  of  mediaeval  civilisa- 
tion, yet  it  was  only  by  Luther's  translation  and 
the  other  versions  made  on  his  model  that  the 
Bible  became  a  really  popular  book,  and  it  was 
only  by  the  Reformation  that  the  Bible  was  estab- 
lished as  the  authority  for  daily  life  in  a  modern, 
that  is,  non-ascetic,  sense. 

The  two  points  insisted  on  by  all  the  reformers 
were,  first,  that  the  Bible  is  perspicuous,  that  is, 
that  every  reader  can  by  himself  find  out  in  his 
Bible  what  is  essential  for  salvation;  and,  sec- 
ondly, that  the  Bible  is  sufficient.  The  Christian 
does  not  need  anything  else;  the  Bible  tells  him 
everything  which  he  requires — of  course  in  its  own 
domain,  religion,  or,  to  use  the  language  of  that 
time,  the  "doctrine  of  salvation."  By  the  Refor- 

138 


THE  PROTESTANT  VIEW  139 

mation  the  Bible  got  rid  of  all  its  rivals,  such  as 
tradition,  Apocrypha,  legend,  canon  law,  and  so  on. 
It  is  wonderful  to  see — and  I  doubt  if  modern  Chris- 
tianity has  realised  the  fact  in  all  its  importance — 
how  by  the  preaching  of  the  reformers  all  these 
things,  which  hitherto  had  been  thought  of  as  inte- 
gral parts  of  Christianity,  simply  fell  away.  No  cult 
of  the  saints,  no  adoration  of  their  images,  no  leg- 
ends, no  fancy,  no  merriment  connected  with  religion, 
but  the  pure  Bible  and  the  stern  doctrine  of  it  and 
the  austere  attitude  of  Puritanism  corresponding 
to  it  were  now  uppermost.  Nay,  the  letter  of 
the  Bible  was  binding  in  a  stricter  sense  than  it  had 
ever  been  before.  Catholicism  made  it  possible  to 
mitigate  the  strictness  by  allegorical  interpretation; 
Protestantism  insisted  upon  taking  the  Bible  in  its 
literal  sense.  There  was  now  no  way  of  escape;  a 
man  had  to  take  whatever  the  Bible  said  or  refuse 
the  Bible  altogether.  In  principle  the  mystery  had 
gone;  the  Bible  was  plain  and  made  itself  under- 
stood. 

It  was  the  literal  sense,  as  established  by  lexicon 
and  grammar,  which  was  to  be  followed.  This 
caused  the  reformers  to  encourage  and  facilitate  the 
study  of  the  original  languages  of  the  Bible.  When 
they  tried  to  improve  the  grammar-schools  and  to 
found  as  many  new  ones  as  possible,  it  was  not  so 


140  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

much  the  humanistic  delight  in  the  classical  lan- 
guages as  the  desire  to  secure  a  sure  knowledge  of 
Greek  and  Hebrew  which  might  enable  a  boy  to 
read  and  to  interpret  the  Bible.  It  is  evident  from 
many  utterances  both  of  Luther  and  Calvin  that 
their  aim  in  all  their  school  work  was  to  provide 
good  preachers  of  the  true  gospel,  or  good  teachers 
of  the  genuine  doctrine  of  the  Bible. 

To  be  sure,  there  are  differences  of  character,  both 
personal  and  national,  between  the  two  great  re- 
formers, which  account  for  a  somewhat  different  de- 
velopment of  their  churches.  In  Luther's  piety  the 
joyful  experience  of  salvation  brings  in  a  happy  note; 
the  children  of  God  praise  his  love  and  grace. 
In  Calvin's  devotion  the  feeling  prevails  that  God's 
majesty  is  above  all  creatures  and  that  his  holy  will 
is  the  supreme  rule  for  our  life.  Religion  with 
Luther  is  bright  and  cheerful,  whereas  with  Calvin 
it  has  a  darker  tinge.  But  both  are  building  on  the 
same  foundation  and  with  the  same  end  in  view: 
from  salvation  to  salvation,  from  grace  to  grace. 
The  -difference  is  but  one  of  attitude  toward  the 
present  life. 

The  difference  finds  its  best  expression  in  a 
varying  use  of  the  phrase  Word  of  God.  Both,  of 
course,  believed  in  an  historical  revelation  of  God 
to  mankind,  and  they  were  convinced  that  this  rev- 


LUTHER  AND  CALVIN  141 

elation  was  to  be  found  in  the  holy  Scriptures.  God 
had  spoken  through  his  prophets;  he  had  given  his 
promises  to  his  people;  he  had  sent  his  Son  and  had 
fulfilled  his  promises  through  him.  All  this  was  to 
be  found  in  the  Bible  and  only  in  the  Bible.  The 
reformers  refused  the  authority  of  tradition,  just  as 
they  declined  to  acknowledge  the  present  individual 
inspiration  of  enthusiasts,  or  "  Schwarmgeister,"  as 
Luther  contemptuously  called  them.  It  was  in  the 
Bible  that  Christianity  had  to  look  for  all  necessary 
information  about  God  and  salvation.  And  yet 
Luther,  when  using  the  expression  Word  of  God, 
scarcely  thinks  of  the  written  book.  It  is  the  living 
word  as  represented  by  the  preaching  of  the  prophets 
and  the  apostles,  and  perpetuated  by  the  preaching 
of  the  ministers  of  the  church.  It  is  to  him  not  a 
formal  authority  but  an  energising  inspiration.  Not 
everything  in  the  Bible  is  authoritative,  merely  by 
the  fact  that  it  stands  in  the  Bible;  only  what  wit- 
nesses to  Christ  is  authoritative  and  is  to  be  taken 
as  the  Word  of  God.  On  the  other  hand,  Zwingli 
and  Calvin  frequently  use  the  term  Word  of  God 
when  speaking  of  the  holy  Scriptures  themselves. 
It  is  characteristic  that  the  reformed  churches  of 
Switzerland  felt  it  their  duty  to  fix  the  exact  num- 
ber of  writings  included  in  this  Word  of  God,  just 
as  the  Roman  Catholic  church  did  at  the  Council 


142  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

of  Trent,  while  no  Lutheran  creed  ever  defines  the 
exact  content  of  the  Bible.  To  the  former  it  was  a 
book  of  law,  to  the  latter  a  book  of  inspiration. 

Luther,  owing  to  his  familiarity  with  Saint  Paul, 
understood  that  Christianity  had  nothing  to  do  with 
the  Law;  the  whole  notion  of  the  Law  had  to  be 
dropped  out  from  the  field  of  religion.  Law  there 
must  be  in  the  government  of  the  state — it  would 
not  be  necessary  even  there,  if  all  people  were  true 
Christians — but  for  the  wicked  there  must  be  a  law 
and  there  must  be  punishment.  The  Christian's  life, 
however,  is  not  a  slave's  obedience  to  injunctions 
but  a  child's  glad  doing  of  his  father's  will;  he  knows 
what  his  father  wants  him  to  do  and  he  does  it 
joyfully.  Luther  is  especially  interested  in  proving 
that  Jesus'  teaching,  in  particular  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount,  does  not  exhibit  an  ascetic  law,  but  gives 
principles  for  the  moral  life  of  every  Christian.  One 
need  not  enter  a  monastery  in  order  to  fulfil  Christ's 
commandments.  It  is  in  the  tasks  of  the  daily  life 
that  a  Christian  has  to  prove  himself  a  true  disciple 
of  Jesus.  The  Bible  is  to  rule  the  daily  life  of  the 
Christian,  but  not  in  the  sense  of  a  law.  When,  in 
1523,  a  preacher  at  Weimar  aimed  to  introduce  the 
Mosaic  law  instead  of  the  common  law,  Luther 
treated  him  as  a  "Schwanngeist,"  and,  in  fact,  it 
was  that  proposal  which  lay  at  the  basis  of  all  the 


LUTHER  AND  CALVIN  143 

"Schwarmgeisterei."  Such  experiments,  aiming  to 
constitute  a  kingdom  of  the  Saints  on  earth,  as  the 
Anabaptists  made  at  Munster  and  elsewhere,  always 
failed,  and  made  Luther  and  his  friends  suspicious 
of  any  such  attempt. 

It  is  different  with  Calvin.  He  is  interested  in 
realising  the  kingdom  of  God  in  the  Christian  con- 
gregation, or,  to  put  it  more  accurately,  in  the  com- 
monwealth of  Geneva,  which  is  to  him  identical  with 
the  Christian  congregation  of  that  place.  So  it  is 
the  commonwealth  which  is  to  be  ruled  by  the  Bible, 
and  the  Bible  in  this  role  acts  as  a  law  to  which 
the  whole  community  as  well  as  the  individual  has  to 
submit.  And  again  it  is  characteristic  that  Calvin 
takes  the  Bible  as  a  unit.  It  is  the  Old  Testament 
law  as  well  as  the  gospel  which  is  to  be  regarded  as 
the  indispensable  rule  both  of  public  and  private 
life.  With  the  Calvinists  the  ten  commandments 
become  an  integral  part  of  the  regular  Sunday  service. 

Of  course  there  are  many  gradations  between  these 
two  positions.  Zwingli,  the  Zurich  reformer,  was  of 
a  different  type  from  Calvin,  while  he  was  even  more 
opposed  to  Luther  than  was  the  Genevan.  Luther's 
rule  was  to  abolish  whatsoever  was  contrary  to 
the  Bible.  Zwingli  would  permit  only  what  was 
based  upon  or  commanded  by  the  Bible;  he  ob- 
jected to  the  use  of  an  organ,  to  the  keeping  of 


144  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

festival  days  except  Sunday,  and  so  on.  Luther 
even  tolerated  pictures  in  the  church.  He  was 
sure  that  no  one  would  adore  them  if  pervaded 
by  the  true  spirit  of  the  gospel,  and  he  was  con- 
vinced that  this  spirit  could  be  successfully  incul- 
cated by  means  of  preaching.  Zwingli  and  Calvin 
both  did  away  with  all  pictures  in  the  churches. 
They  had  the  walls  whitewashed  and  the  ten  com- 
mandments and  other  passages  from  the  Bible 
painted  on  them.  Nothing  is  so  characteristic  of 
this  difference  between  the  Lutheran  and  the  Cal- 
vinistic  feeling  as  the  history  of  an  epitaph  in  an 
East  Prussian  church,  the  monument  of  the  noble 
family  of  the  earls  of  Dohna.  At  the  time  of  the 
Reformation  they  joined  the  Grand  Master,  later 
Duke,  Albrecht  of  Brandenburg  in  taking  Luther's 
part.  The  epitaph,  which  was  erected  in  the  church 
of  Mohrungen  on  the  death  of  Earl  Peter  in  1553, 
was  decorated  with  a  picture  showing  the  holy 
Trinity  adored  by  the  family  of  the  donor.  At  the 
beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century  the  family 
went  over  to  Calvinism,  and  the  painting  was  altered 
by  covering  the  image  of  the  holy  Trinity  with 
black  varnish  and  putting  over  it  some  Bible  verses 
in  gold  letters. 

The  different  attitude  toward  the  Bible  finds  its 
expression  also  in  the  fact  that  the  Lutherans  used 


PSALMS  AND  HYMNS  145 

hymns,  whereas  the  Calvinists  adhered  to  the  Bibli- 
cal Psalter.  Of  course  the  vigorous  songs  composed 
by  Luther  are  most  of  them  based  upon  Psalms 
and  other  Biblical  passages,  and  so  were  the  greater 
number  of  hymns  in  the  Lutheran  church.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  Calvinists  did  not  agree  with  the 
English  church  in  taking  over  the  alternative  recita- 
tion of  the  Psalter  from  the  mediaeval  exercises  of 
the  monasteries  and  large  cathedral  choirs.  They 
used  the  Psalter  in  a  rhythmical  paraphrase  adapted 
to  modern  singing,  but  keeping  so  near  to  the  word- 
ing of  the  Psalms  that  they  even  called  it  the  Psalm- 
book.  The  difference  was,  in  fact,  slight,  but  they 
felt  it  to  be  essential.  The  Lutherans  followed  the 
usage  of  the  church,  the  Calvinists  the  very  word 
of  the  Bible.  It  is  remarkable,  however,  that 
hymns  gradually  gained  more  importance  among 
the  Calvinists,  especially  since  the  time  of  the 
eighteenth-century  revivals,  and  that  nowadays 
the  hymn-book,  enriched  by  the  contributions  of 
recent  time  from  poets  of  all  denominations,  is  in 
favour  with  all  Protestants  and  in  some  circles  is  even 
in  danger  of  becoming  a  substitute  for  the  Bible. 
In  spite  of  all  these  differences,  these  two  great 
forms  of  Protestantism  manifest  almost  the  same  at- 
titude toward  the  Bible,  and  we  see  them  changing 
their  attitude  almost  at  the  same  time  and  in  the 


146  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

same  direction.  The  theologians  of  the  orthodox 
period  exaggerated  the  authority  of  the  Bible  to  such 
an  extent  that  critics  like  Lessing  could  speak  of  Bib- 
liolatry  or  Bible-worship.  They  extended  the  notion 
of  inspiration  even  to  the  smallest  details  in  the 
printed  text  which  lay  before  them,  with  no  regard 
for  the  fact  that  those  details  were  late  additions, 
sometimes  even  misprints,  and  that  the  various 
editions  did  not  agree  in  these  details.  True  scholas- 
tics as  they  were,  they  had  no  sense  for  facts  but 
an  unlimited  desire  for  theory;  the  facts  had  to 
submit  to  the  theory,  and  whoever  would  appeal 
to  the  facts  against  the  theory  was  denounced  as  a 
heretic  and  driven  out  as  a  disreputable  person. 
This  doctrinal  attitude  changed  when,  at  the  end  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  Pietism  in  Germany  and 
Methodism  in  England  once  again  turned  religion 
from  ecclesiastical  doctrine  to  personal  devotion. 
The  estimation  of  the  Bible  is  not  diminished — quite 
the  contrary;  yet  it  finds  its  expression  not  in  stiff 
formulas  of  dogmatics  but  in  beautiful  hymns. 
Under  the  direction  of  P.  J.  Spener  (d.  1705)  peo- 
ple once  more  gather  in  private  circles  to  read 
and  to  interpret  the  Bible;  once  more  the  students 
are  drawn  away  from  dead  scholasticism  to  the  liv- 
ing study  of  the  Bible.  To  the  theologia  dogmatica 
is  opposed  a  theologia  biblica.  People  begin  to  real- 


PIETISM  AND  RATIONALISM  147 

ise  again  what  is  the  true  use  of  the  Bible,  not  as  a 
text-book  for  dogmatic  competitions  and  controver- 
sies, but  as  the  divine  word  of  comfort  and  exhorta- 
tion, a  guide  to  salvation,  and  an  expression  of  sal- 
vation already  gained.  There  is  a  beautiful  tract 
written  by  A.  H.  Francke  of  Halle  (d.  1727)  and 
very  often  printed  as  a  preface  to  the  Bible  in  Ger- 
man, "A  brief  direction  how  to  read  the  Bible  for 
edification."  It  sounds  thoroughly  modern,  as  it 
deals  not  with  questions  of  theology  but  entirely  with 
piety.  This  attitude  was  again  changed  by  the  so- 
called  rationalism.  That  movement,  too,  entered  the 
Protestantism  of  Germany  as  well  as  of  England  and 
America  in  various  forms  and  under  various  names 
(deism,  unitarianism),  but  with  the  same  tendency. 
It  may  be  that  it  had  an  easier  start  and  a  wider 
spread  in  the  Lutheran  church  of  Germany.  We 
shall  speak  of  its  influence  in  the  next  chapter.  The 
Bible  was  submitted  to  reason  or  explained  accord- 
ing to  reason.  The  Bible  was  to  be  followed  for 
the  sake  of  the  precepts  of  reason  contained  in 
it  or  else  not  at  all.  It  was,  however,  the  com- 
mon conviction  that  the  Bible  gave  the  most  rea- 
sonable injunctions,  and  whereas  orthodoxy  had 
been  mostly  intellectual  and  Pietism  emotional, 
rationalism  by  its  moral  strictness  helped  the  Bible 
to  retain  its  influence  on  daily  life. 


148  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

This  influence  was  due  to  the  fact  that  since 
Luther's  time  the  Bible  was  in  every  house;  it  was 
the  centre  of  the  regular  morning  and  evening 
prayers,  the  father  reading  and  explaining  to  his 
family  some  chapters  of  the  Bible.  What  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  Bible  had  been  gained  by  the  laity  soon 
after  the  Reformation  is  shown  by  the  prince  elector 
of  Saxony  Johann  Friedrich,  who  at  the  important 
meetings  held  at  Augsburg  in  1530  was  able  to 
quote  from  memory  all  necessary  passages  of  the 
Bible. 

In  Lutheran  countries  the  influence  of  the  Bible 
found  expression  in  arts  and  crafts.  Not  only  were 
the  walls  of  the  churches  decorated  with  pictures 
taken  from  the  Bible  but  also  the  walls  of  private 
houses.  The  furniture  of  a  farmhouse  was  painted 
with  Biblical  stories,  very  awkward  paintings, 
indeed,  but  showing  the  spirit  of  simple  and  plain 
devotion.  It  is  otherwise  when  a  rich  lady's 
dressing-table  in  baroque  or  rococo  is  decorated 
with  such  scenes.  We  feel  that  they  are  out  of  place 
there  and  that  scenes  taken  from  ancient  mythology 
would  suit  such  a  purpose  much  better.  We  should 
consider  it  a  little  profane  that,  at  a  wedding  dinner 
in  the  sixteenth  century,  between  the  several  courses 
elaborate  dishes  were  passed,  representing  Bib- 
lical scenes.  We  cannot  help  remembering  the  re- 


PAINTING  AND  MUSIC  149 

mark  of  that  preacher  of  the  old  church  who  ex- 
claimed: "Oh,  that  they  had  these  stories  painted 
in  their  hearts!'* 

Much  more  important  is  the  art  of  music.  Luther 
was  fond  of  it;  he  would  never  have  given  up  a  choir 
and  an  organ.  He  made  it  possible  for  the  Lu- 
theran church  to  produce  the  greatest  masterpieces 
that  music  has  ever  achieved — Bach's  oratorios. 
While  the  Roman  church  directed  the  work  of  its 
great  musicians  toward  the  glorification  of  the  mass, 
and  the  Calvinistic  church  became  rigorously  op- 
posed to  the  very  art  of  music,  the  Lutheran  com- 
posers were  inspired  by  the  Bible  itself.  The 
Biblical  sonatas  of  Johann  Kuhnau  (d.  1722)  seem 
to  us  mere  trifling.  The  real  work  was  done  by 
Heinrich  Schiitz  (d.  1672)  and  Johann  Sebastian 
Bach,  the  cantor  of  Saint  Thomas  in  Leipzig  (d. 
1750),  who  succeeded  in  giving  to  the  Bible  a 
new  voice,  a  voice  which  is  still  sounding  and 
entering  circles  where  the  printed  Bible  would 
scarcely  be  read.  The  combination  in  Bach's 
oratorios  is  very  striking — the  majestic  church 
hymns  sung  by  the  choir,  the  simple  recitative 
of  Scripture,  and,  last  but  not  least,  the  arias 
giving  the  response  of  the  pious  individual  to  the 
words  of  God  in  the  Bible.  This  is  the  most  char- 
acteristic part  of  it.  Protestant  piety  cannot  be 


150  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

without  the  personal  expression  of  individual  feel- 
ing; it  is  thoroughly  subjective  in  the  highest  sense. 
As  Luther  in  his  catechism  explains  the  Apostles' 
Creed  thus,  "I  believe  that  God  has  created  me 
.  .  .  ;  I  believe  that  Jesus  Christ  is  my  Lord, 
who  has  saved  me  .  .  .  ;  I  believe  that  it  is  im- 
possible for  me  to  come  to  Jesus  Christ  without  the 
help  of  the  Holy  Ghost  .  .  .  ,"  so  Protestant  piety 
gives  to  everything  this  subjective  note.  There  is 
a  Greek  manuscript  of  the  Gospels  from  the  four- 
teenth century,  written  in  several  colours  to  dis- 
tinguish the  words  of  Jesus,  of  his  apostles,  of  his 
enemies,  and  of  the  evangelist.  The  narrative  of 
the  evangelist  is  given  in  green  ink,  the  words  of  the 
Pharisees  and  other  adversaries  of  Jesus  in  black, 
the  words  of  the  disciples  in  blue,  and  the  sayings 
of  Jesus  himself  are  in  red.  It  is  a  curious  piece  of 
work,  showing  the  tendency  of  the  Greek  church  to 
dramatise  the  sacred  history  of  the  Gospel.  With 
this  Greek  copy  we  may  compare  a  Protestant  fam- 
ily Bible  mentioned  by  a  modern  German  preacher. 
It  is  a  plain  old  printed  Bible,  but  the  pious  great- 
grandfather has  marked  it  all  through  with  various 
colours,  which  he  explains  in  a  note :  "  What  touched 
the  sin  of  my  heart: — Black.  What  inspired  me  to 
good : — Blue.  What  comforted  me  in  sorrow : — Red. 
What  promised  me  the  grace  of  God  in  eternity: — 


SUBJECTIVISM  IN  PIETY  151 

Gold.'*  The  difference  between  objective  facts  and 
subjective  relation  to  them,  between  apprehension 
and  appreciation,  is  evident.  This  is  the  new  spirit 
which  pervades  the  Protestant  reader  of  the  Bible, 
and  therefore  the  Bible  is  much  more  to  him  than  it 
had  been  to  Christianity  in  former  times. 

Where  the  Bible  was  read  in  such  a  spirit  it  was 
bound  to  gain  an  influence  upon  the  daily  life.  We 
must  admit  this  even  if  we  have  no  direct  evidence. 
The  inward  acting  of  the  spirit  in  the  individual  is 
inaccessible  to  scientific  observation  and  statistics. 

We  are  in  a  much  better  position  regarding  the 
Calvinistic  circles,  for  here  the  influence  of  the 
Bible  was  a  public  one.  The  Bible  here  was  recog- 
nised as  the  only  rule  to  be  followed  in  public  life  as 
well  as  in  private.  The  most  characteristic  feature 
is  the  attitude  toward  the  Sabbath.  Luther  had 
explained  the  third  commandment  (according  to  his 
numeration,  the  fourth  according  to  the  Calvinists) 
as  meaning  "den  Feiertag  heiligen,"  to  use  the 
day,  granted  by  God  as  a  holiday,  for  going  to 
church  and  listening  to  the  preaching  of  the  gospel; 
so  the  Lutherans,  who  never  called  it  Sabbath,  did 
not  insist  upon  avoiding  all  work,  but  upon  attend- 
ing the  holy  service;  besides,  human  feeling  led 
them  to  relieve  their  servants  and  employees  so  far 
as  possible  from  their  labour.  The  Calvinists  kept 


152  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

the  Sabbath,  as  they  said,  exactly  according  to 
the  Old  Testament  commandment:  "Thou  shalt 
not  do  any  work."  It  reminds  us  sometimes  of 
the  minuteness  of  rabbinical  Sabbath  controver- 
sies when  we  see  how  carefully  the  Sabbath  is  kept 
as  a  day  for  doing  no  work  whatever;  even  the  chil- 
dren are  forbidden  to  play  with  their  toys.  It  is  a 
concession  made  to  the  gospel  if  works  of  piety,  of 
charity,  or  of  necessity  are  permitted. 

Another  prominent  feature  is  the  use  of  Biblical 
names.  Among  Lutherans  and  members  of  the  En- 
glish church  the  use  of  Christian  names,  mostly  de- 
rived from  famous  saints  or  kings,  as  Edward, 
George,  Richard,  Robert,  Thomas,  William,  con- 
tinued; while  the  Calvinists  preferred  Biblical 
names  such  as  Abraham,  Isaac,  Moses,  Joshua,  Eli- 
jah, Jeremiah,  Nathaniel.  They  often  chose  the 
names  of  obscure  persons  from  the  Bible,  such  as 
Abia,  Abiel,  Ammi,  Eliphalet,  Jared,  Jedidiah,  Je- 
rathmeel,  Reuben,  Uriah.  It  was  not  so  much  the 
admiration  for  this  or  that  hero  in  the  Bible  as  the 
simple  demand  for  something  Biblical  which  gave  to 
the  children  such  unfamiliar  names.  Parents  did  not 
care  for  the  real  character  of  the  man  to  whom  the 
name  first  belonged  provided  he  was  mentioned  in 
the  Bible;  neither  Delilah  nor  Archelaus  had  a  repu- 
tation which  would  make  their  names  desirable;  but, 


BIBLICAL  NAMES  AND  GAMES  153 

nevertheless,  they  were  given.  Gamaliel  was  a 
Pharisee,  a  scribe,  very  far  from  being  a  Christian, 
but  the  name,  being  in  the  Bible,  became  a  Chris- 
tian name  among  the  descendants  of  one  of  the 
Pilgrim  fathers.  Biblical  reminiscences  also  are  to 
be  found  in  Christian  names,  such  as  Faithful, 
Faintnot,  Hopestill,  Strong;  Praise-God  Barbone, 
one  of  Cromwell's  followers,  is  said  to  have  had  two 
brothers,  baptised  with  the  Christian  names  of 
"Christ-came-into-the-world-to-save  Barbone"  and 
"  If-Christ-had-  not-died  -  thou  -  hadst-been  -  damned 
Barbone"  respectively;  but  this  is  apocryphal,  and 
so  is  probably  the  American  counterpart:  "Through- 
many-trials-and-tribulations-we-must-enter-into-the 
kingdom-of-God"  (Acts  15 : 22)  as  a  Christian  name. 

One  can  hardly  deny  that  this  Biblicism  some- 
times became  an  abuse  of  the  Bible.  The  Scrip- 
tures were  used  for  investigating  the  future.  This 
method,  which  we  have  already  noted  in  the  second 
chapter,  was  made  an  official  one  in  the  Moravian 
church.  People  used  Bible  verses  in  their  games; 
riddles  were  taken  from  the  Bible.  As  the  one  and 
only  book  the  Bible  had  to  serve  as  a  whole  library 
and  provide  all  kinds  of  entertainment.  That  is  the 
other  side  of  the  matter. 

The  influence  of  the  Bible  on  public  life  in  the 
time  of  Puritanism  is  illustrated  best  by  the  records 


154  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

of  the  first  plantations  in  New  England.1  When, 
in  June,  1639,  "all  the  free  planters"  of  the  col- 
ony of  New  Haven  "assembled  together  in  a  gen- 
eral meeting  to  consult  about  settling  civil  gov- 
ernment according  to  God,"  the  first  question 
laid  before  them  by  John  Davenport  was:  "Whether 
the  Scriptures  do  hold  forth  a  perfect  rule  for  the 
direction  and  government  of  all  men  in  all  duties 
which  they  are  to  perform  to  God  and  men  as  well 
in  the  government  of  families  and  commonwealth 
as  in  matters  of  the  church."  "This  was  assented 
unto  by  all,  no  man  dissenting,  as  was  expressed  by 
holding  up  of  hands."  The  second  question  was 
whether  all  do  hold  themselves  bound  by  that 
(plantation)  covenant  that  "in  all  public  offices, 
etc.,  we  would  all  of  us  be  ordered  by  those  rules 
which  the  Scripture  holds  forth  to  us."  This  was 
answered  in  the  same  way.  Therefore  it  was  voted 
unanimously,  "that  the  Word  of  God  shall  be  the 
only  rule  to  be  attended  unto  in  ordering  the  affairs 
of  government  in  this  plantation."  Before  they  go 
on  to  select  officials  from  their  number,  the  chapter  on 
the  institution  of  the  seventy  elders  (Ex.  18)  is  read, 
together  with  Deut.  1  :  13  and  17  :  15  and  I  Cor. 

1  Cf.  C.  T.  Hoadly,  Records  of  the  Colony  and  Plantation  of 
New  Haven  from  1638  to  1649,  Hartford,  1857,  and  Records 
of  the  Colony  or  Jurisdiction  of  New  Haven  from  May,  1653,  to 
the  Union  (1665),  Hartford,  1858. 


PURITAN  LEGISLATION  155 

6  :  1-7,  and  one  of  the  planters  declares  that  he  had 
felt  scruples  about  it,  but  that  these  had  been 
removed  by  reading  Deut.  17  :  15  at  morning 
prayers.  When  a  difference  arises  between  two 
members  of  the  colony  they  refer  it  for  arbitration  to 
brethren,  in  accordance  with  I  Cor.  6  :  1-7.  A 
prisoner  is  pressed  to  confess  his  crime  by  remind- 
ing him  of  that  passage  of  Scripture:  "He  that 
hideth  his  sin  shall  not  prosper,  but  he  that  con- 
fesseth  and  forsaketh  his  sins  shall  find  mercy" 
(Prov.  28  :  13).  When  a  murder  has  been  com- 
mitted they  sentence  the  guilty  to  death  "  according 
to  the  nature  of  the  fact  and  the  rule  in  that  case, 
He  that  sheds  man's  blood,  by  man  shall  his  blood 
be  shed"  (Gen.  9:6).  They  refer  to  Lev.  20  :  15 
in  a  case  of  bestiality  in  order  to  justify  the  sen- 
tence of  death.  When  questions  and  scruples  arise 
between  New  Haven  and  Massachusetts  about  the 
justice  of  an  offensive  war,  New  Haven  refers  to 
the  story  of  Jehoshaphat,  king  of  Judah,  "who 
sinned  and  was  rebuked  by  two  prophets  Jehu  and 
Eliezer  for  joining  with  and  helping  Ahab  and 
Ahaziah,  kings  of  Israel"  (II  Chron.  17-20).  From 
this,  they  say,  one  might  infer  that  even  a  defensive 
war  and  all  leagues  are  forbidden  by  the  law  of  God. 
On  the  other  hand,  they  rely  on  the  conquest  of 
Canaan  and  David's  war  against  the  Ammonites 


156  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

(II  Sam.  10)  as  examples  for  the  justice  of  an  offen- 
sive war  and  even  a  vindictive  war  of  revenge. 

It  is  their  fundamental  agreement,  not  to  be  dis- 
puted or  questioned  hereafter,  "that  the  judicial 
law  of  God  given  by  Moses  and  expounded  in  other 
parts  of  Scripture,  so  far  as  it  is  a  hedge  and  a  fence 
to  the  moral  law  and  neither  ceremonial  nor  typical 
nor  had  any  reference  to  Canaan,  has  an  everlasting 
equity  in  it  and  should  be  the  rule  of  their  proceed- 
ings." This  fundamental  law,  as  it  is  fixed  in  1639 
and  reinforced  in  1642  and  1644,  shows  clearly  the 
spirit  of  this  legislation.  At  the  same  time  we  learn 
from  the  many  restrictions  how  difficult  it  was  to 
adapt  the  Old  Testament  law  to  the  needs  of  this 
Christian  commonwealth. 

The  first  records  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay  Com- 
pany1 show  indeed  a  marked  difference.  They 
are  less  Scriptural.  In  the  royal  charter  given  to 
the  company  by  Charles  I  in  1628  the  Bible  is  not 
mentioned;  the  aim  of  the  colony  is  said  to  be  "to 
win  and  incite  the  natives  of  the  country  to  the 
knowledge  and  obedience  of  the  only  true  God  and 
Saviour  of  mankind  and  the  Christian  faith."  The 
governor  is  bound  by  his  oath  "  to  do  his  best  endeav- 
our to  draw  on  the  natives  of  this  country,  called 

1  Records  of  the  Governor  and  Company  of  the  Massachusetts 
Bay,  edited  by  N.  B.  Shurtleff.  Boston,  1853. 


MASSACHUSETTS  CHARTER  157 

New  England,  to  the  knowledge  of  the  true  God 
and  to  conserve  the  planters  and  others  coming 
hither  in  the  same  knowledge  and  fear  of  God,"  or, 
according  to  another  form  of  oath,  to  act  accord- 
ing to  the  law  of  God  and  for  the  advancement  of 
his  Gospel,  the  laws  of  this  land,  and  the  good  of  this 
plantation." 

But  in  the  laws  framed  by  the  colonists  them- 
selves, the  Bible  is  constantly  appealed  to.  Pass- 
ing a  law  against  drinking  healths,  in  1639,  the 
General  Court  declared  this  to  be  a  mere  useless 
ceremony  and  also  the  occasion  of  many  sins,  "  which 
as  they  ought  in  all  places  and  times  to  be  prevented 
carefully,  so  especially  in  plantations  of  churches 
and  commonwealths  wherein  the  least  known  evils 
are  not  to  be  tolerated  by  such  as  are  bound  by 
solemn  covenant  to  walk  by  the  rule  of  God's  word 
in  all  their  conversation."  This  statement  is  a 
solemn  one,  and  they  put  it  into  effect  as  far  as 
possible.  When  discussing  in  the  General  Court  the 
question  whether  a  certain  number  of  magistrates 
should  be  chosen  for  life,  a  question  which  had  a 
good  deal  of  importance  for  the  future  development 
of  the  colony,  they  decided  in  favour  of  it,  "for 
that  it  was  shown  from  the  word  of  God,  etc.,  that 
the  principal  magistrates  ought  to  be  for  life."  Nay, 
even  a  question  of  minor  importance  raised  by 


158  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

the  Scriptures,  whether  women  must  wear  veils, 
was  eagerly  discussed,  both  parties  relying  on  Scrip- 
tural proofs. 

When,  in  1646,  the  General  Court  found  it  nec- 
essary to  convoke  a  public  assembly  of  the  elders, 
they  did  so,  protesting,  however,  that  "their  lawful 
power  by  the  word  of  God  to  assemble  the  churches 
or  their  messengers  upon  occasion  of  counsel"  is 
not  to  be  questioned,  and  therefore  the  said  assem- 
bly of  elders,  after  having  "discussed,  disputed,  and 
cleared  up  by  the  word  of  God  such  questions  of 
church  government  and  discipline  ...  as  they  shall 
think  needful  and  meet/'  is  to  report  to  the  General 
Court,  "to  the  end  that  the  same  being  found  agree- 
able to  the  word  of  God,  it  may  receive  from  the  said 
General  Court  such  approbation  as  is  meet,  that  the 
Lord  being  thus  acknowledged  by  church  and  state 
to  be  our  Judge,  our  Lawgiver,  and  our  King,  he  may 
be  graciously  pleased  still  to  save  us  as  hitherto  he 
has  done  .  .  .  and  so  the  churches  in  New  England 
may  be  Jehovah's  and  he  may  be  to  us  a  God  from 
generation  to  generation."  It  is  remarkable  that 
not  only  the  church  synod  is  to  judge  what  is 
"agreeable  to  the  holy  Scriptures"  but  the  civil 
government  takes  it  as  its  own  duty  to  make 
sure  that  the  resolutions  of  the  synod  are  really  in 
accordance  with  the  Scripture  and  only  then  to  give 


JOHN  COTTON'S  ABSTRACT  159 

their  approbation.  It  is  the  secular  power  which 
feels  bound  to  the  Word  of  God  and  to  superintend 
its  strict  observance.  But  in  fact  state  and  church 
are  not  to  be  distinguished  in  this  period  of  New 
England  history. 

In  1641  the  Rev.  John  Cotton,  "teacher  of  the 
Boston  church,"  published  at  London  "An  Abstract 
or  the  Laws  of  New  England  as  they  are  now  es- 
tablished." The  first  edition  does  not  mention  Cot- 
ton's name;  this  was  added  only  after  his  death  in 
a  second  edition,  published  in  1655  by  his  friend 
William  Aspinwall.  This  Abstract  by  John  Cotton 
does  not  represent,  as  its  title  seems  to  indicate,  the 
actual  law;  it  is  a  proposed  code  of  laws  for  New 
England.  But  it  has  influenced  to  a  great  extent, 
if  not  the  legislation  of  Massachusetts,  at  any.  rate 
the  "Laws  for  Government,  published  for  the  use 
of  New  Haven  Colony"  in  1656.  The  remarkable 
feature  is  that  Cotton  gives  marginal  references  to 
the  Bible  for  each  one  of  his  rules,  for  instance :  "  All 
magistrates  are  to  be  chosen  (1)  by  the  free  Bur- 
gesses— Deut.  1  :  13;  (2)  out  of  the  free  Burgesses— 
Deut.  17  :  15;  (3)  out  of  the  ablest  men  and  most 
approved  amongst  them — Ex.  18  :  21 ;  (4)  out  of  the 
rank  of  Noblemen  or  Gentlemen  amongst  them — 
Eccles.  10:17,  Jer.  30  :  21,"  and  so  on.  It  is  ac- 
cording to  the  Old  Testament  rule  that  the  eldest 


160  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

son  ought  to  inherit  twice  as  much  as  his  broth- 
ers; it  is  a  true  expression  of  the  Old  Testament 
meaning  when  punishment  is  extended  even  to  ani- 
mals which  kill  a  man  (cp.  Ex.  21  :  28).  The  spirit 
of  this  legislation  is  almost  as  severe,  not  to  say 
cruel,  as  the  spirit  of  Charlemagne's  Saxon  law. 
Twenty-four  kinds  of  trespassing  are  enumerated 
which  are  to  be  punished  with  death.  It  is  evi- 
dently against  the  legislator's  own  view  that  an 
exemption  is  made  for  simple  fornication,  "not  to 
be  punished  with  death  according  to  God's  own 
law,"  as  he  adds  by  way  of  apology.  In  the  sec- 
ond edition  the  Bible  verses  are  printed  at  length 
in  the  text  itself,  the  margin  being  devoted  to 
learned  remarks  on  different  translations.  The 
motto  which  expresses  the  character  of  this  abstract 
is  taken  from  Isaiah  33  :  22:  "The  Lord  is  our 
Judge,  the  Lord  is  our  Lawgiver,  the  Lord  is  our 
King;  He  will  save  us." 

The  official  Laws  of  Massachusetts,  as  established 
in  1658  and  printed  in  1660,  have  no  Bible  refer- 
ences in  the  margin;  but  in  the  restriction  of  flog- 
ging to  the  effect  that  no  more  than  forty  stripes 
should  be  applied,  and  in  the  requirement  that 
sentence  of  death  may  be  imposed  only  when 
two  or  three  witnesses  testify  to  the  guilt,  the 
Biblical  rules  given  in  Deut.  25  :  5  and  19  :  15 


DISCIPLINE  AND  EDUCATION  161 

are  seen  to  be  at  work.  Sabbath-breaking  is  to 
be  punished  with  a  fine  of  ten  shillings,  the  penalty 
being  doubled  in  the  second  case.  In  1630  a  man 
had  been  whipped  for  shooting  on  the  Sabbath. 

In  1647  the  General  Court  passed  a  law  ordering 
that  each  township  containing  over  fifty  households 
should  appoint  a  schoolmaster,  and  if  there  were 
more  than  a  hundred  families,  a  grammar-school 
was  to  be  supported.  This  care  for  education  is  in- 
spired by  the  desire  of  securing  a  true  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Bible,  as  is  proved  by  the  following  state- 
ment of  motives :  "  It  being  the  chief  project  of  that 
old  deluder  Satan  to  keep  men  from  the  knowledge 
of  the  Scriptures,  as  in  former  times  by  keeping  them 
in  an  unknown  tongue,  so  in  these  latter  times  by 
persuading  from  the  use  of  tongues,  that  so  at  least 
the  true  sense  and  meaning  of  the  original  might 
be  clouded  by  false  glosses  of  saint-seeming  deceiv- 
ers; that  learning  may  not  be  buried  in  the  grave 
of  our  fathers  in  the  church  and  commonwealth, 
therefore  ordered,"  etc. 

After  the  college  had  been  founded  in  1636,  they 
chose  in  1643  for  its  seal  a  shield  containing  three 
books  with  Ve-ri-tas  written  on  them,  two  open  and 
one  seen  from  the  back.  Oxford  has  between 
three  crowns  one  book  with  seven  clasps.  This  book 
evidently  is  the  Bible;  it  has  Dominus  illuminatio 


162  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

mea  (Psalm  27  :  1)  written  on  it.  The  seven  clasps 
are  said  to  indicate  the  seven  liberal  arts  and  the 
three  crowns  the  three  modes  of  philosophy.  It  is 
characteristic  of  the  Puritan  spirit  that  their  shield 
had  nothing  but  three  Bibles.  The  meaning  of  Veri- 
taSj  of  course,  is  not  (as  it  has  been  taken  in  recent 
times)  that  the  aim  of  all  research  is  truth.  The 
Puritan  fathers  were  not  concerned  with  research; 
they  believed  in  revelation,  and  it  was  by  the 
revelation  laid  down  in  the  Bible  that  truth  was 
transmitted  to  mankind.  The  three  Bibles  may  or 
may  not  be  a  symbol  of  the  holy  Trinity;  the 
script  on  the  front  and  on  the  back  recalls  the 
book  written  within  and  on  the  back  in  Rev.  5:1. 
They  meant  that  the  Bible  was  the  fundamental 
source  of  all  knowledge.  Harvard  College  was 
founded  to  be  a  training-school  for  ministers,  who 
should  know  the  truth  and  its  source.  Christo  et 
eccksia  became  the  second  motto  of  the  college. 
That  it  has  developed  into  a  university,  containing, 
besides  a  college  and  the  divinity  school,  schools  for 
law,  medicine,  applied  science,  etc.,  is  due  to  a  total 
change  of  public  opinion  at  a  much  later  time.  The 
Puritan  use  of  the  Bible  has  disappeared,  but  some- 
thing of  the  Puritan  spirit  may  still  be  seen  in  the 
inscription  on  the  front  of  the  modern  building  of 
the  Harvard  Law  School,  drawn  from  Ex.  18  :  20: 


THE  HARVARD  SEAL  163 

"Thou  shalt  teach  them  ordinances  and  laws  and 
shalt  shew  them  the  way  wherein  they  must  walk, 
and  the  work  that  they  must  do." 


VIII 

THE  BIBLE  BECOMES  ONCE  MORE  THE  BOOK 
OF  DEVOTION 

HAVING  made  our  way  through  the  centuries,  we 
now  approach  our  own  time,  and  at  once  we 
remark  two  facts:  Never  before  had  the  Bible 
such  a  circulation  as  it  has  now  gained.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  seems  to  have  lost  most  of  its  influ- 
ence. We  must  look  at  these  two  facts  before 
we  raise  the  question  what  value  the  Bible  has  for 
the  civilisation  of  to-day. 

Printing  greatly  facilitated  the  circulation  of 
the  Bible  and,  as  the  result  of  the  Reformation,  it 
had  become  the  book  of  the  Christian  family.  And 
yet  during  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries 
the  circulation  of  the  Bible  was  rather  limited. 
The  Bible  might  be  a  treasure  of  the  household,  but 
not  the  personal  property  of  the  individual.  The 
first  editions,  as  we  have  seen,  scarcely  exceeded  one 
or  two  hundred  copies.  In  contrast,  one  of  the  most 
assiduous  and  industrious  promoters  of  Bible  read- 
ing, Baron  von  Canstein,  who  settled  at  Halle  in 

164 


BIBLE  SOCIETIES  165 

A.  H.  Francke's  institute,  published  during  the  last 
nine  years  of  his  life  (d.  1719)  forty  thousand  Bibles 
and  one  hundred  thousand  New  Testaments.  To- 
day the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society  issues 
more  than  five  million  copies — one  million  Bibles, 
one  and  a  half  million  New  Testaments,  and  two 
and  a  half  million  parts  of  the  Bible — yearly.  The 
progress  is  due  to  the  invention  of  the  rotary  press 
and  other  improvements  in  printing  machinery. 

Besides,  the  circulation  of  the  Bible  has  received 
strong  support  through  the  foundation  of  Bible 
societies.  The  story  is  well  known  how  Thomas 
Charles  discovered  the  great  desire  for  copies  of  the 
Bible  among  his  Welsh  countrymen,  how,  when  he 
gathered  some  friends  for  the  purpose  of  providing 
them  with  Bibles,  the  Baptist  preacher  Thomas 
Hughes  put  in  the  question,  "And  why  not  for  other 
peoples,  too?"  and  how  on  his  motion  the  Society 
was  started  on  March  7,  1804,  as  the  British  and 
Foreign  Bible  Society.  It  is  wonderful  to  hear  of 
the  work  done  by  this  Society  in  the  last  hun- 
dred years.  If  one  visits  the  Bible  House  in  Queen 
Victoria  Street  in  London  he  gets  an  impression 
of  the  extent  and  the  importance  of  the  work  done 
there.  The  Society  has  its  presses  as  well  as 
its  translators  all  over  the  world;  it  has  its  agents 
scattered  through  all  the  nations,  and  it  has  be- 


166  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

gun  to  do  not  only  a  publishers*  business  proper 
but  scholarly  work  as  well.  A  vast  collection  of 
Bible  editions  from  all  times  and  in  all  tongues  has 
been  gathered,  and  a  valuable  catalogue  published 
which  is  of  great  importance  for  bibliography  in 
general. 

The  greatest  merit  of  the  British  and  Foreign 
Bible  Society,  however,  is  the  fact  that  it  stimulated 
the  foundation  of  other  great  Bible  societies.  There 
were  some  small  beginnings  in  Germany  and 
Switzerland.  They  suddenly  became  strong  and 
influential  in  consequence  of  the  report  made 
concerning  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society 
by  its  secretary,  Doctor  Steinkopf,  and  Basel  and 
Stuttgart  made  a  new  start  in  1804  and  1812. 
After  the  Napoleonic  War  in  1814,  Mr.  Pinkerton 
travelled  through  Germany  with  the  result  that 
Bible  societies  were  started  at  Berlin,  Dresden,  El- 
berfeld,  and  Copenhagen,  and  in  Holland,  Norway, 
and  even  Russia.  In  1808  Philadelphia  joined 
the  movement.  The  American  Bible  Society  has 
twice  canvassed  the  entire  United  States,  find- 
ing that  five  hundred  thousand  families  were  with- 
out any  Bible,  and  selling  sixty  million  Bibles. 
It  is  remarkable  that  in  the  beginning  Roman 
Catholics  joined  the  Bible  societies  enthusiasti- 
cally. A  Bible  society  was  founded  at  Regens- 


BIBLE  CIRCULATION  167 

burg  in  1805,  supported  almost  exclusively  by 
the  Roman  Catholic  clergy.  But  as  early  as  1817, 
soon  after  the  restoration  of  the  Jesuits  by  Pope 
Pius  VII,  these  Bible  societies  were  dissolved;  the 
Roman  Catholics  were  forbidden  to  be  members 
of  the  other  Bible  societies,  and  in  the  syllabus  of 
Pius  IX,  in  1864,  the  Bible  societies  are  reckoned 
among  the  dangers  of  our  time,  together  with 
Masonry  and  other  secret  societies. 

By  the  help  of  the  Bible  societies  it  has  become 
possible  that  Bibles  should  really  spread  among  the 
people.  In  Germany  each  boy  and  girl  who  goes 
to  school  has  his  own  Bible.  Bibles  and  New 
Testaments  are  distributed  among  the  soldiers. 
Most  churches  make  a  present  of  a  Bible  to  each 
couple  who  are  to  be  married.  There  is  rather  a 
superabundance  of  Bibles,  which  contrasts  sharply 
with  the  estimation  in  which  the  Bible  is  held.  As 
Spurgeon,  in  his  drastic  way,  said  in  one  of  his  stimu- 
lating sermons:  "The  Bible  is  in  every  house,  but 
in  many  the  dust  on  it  is  so  thick  that  you  might 
write  on  it:  Damnation."  It  was  a  veteran  Bible 
agent  who,  after  thirty  years'  experience,  said:  "It 
is  easy  to  give  away  dozens  of  Bibles,  but  only  the 
one  which  you  sell  will  be  valued." 

The  circulation  has  been  greatly  enlarged  by  num- 
bers of  translations.  We  remember  that  the  first 


168  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

translations  of  the  Bible  were  connected  with  Chris- 
tian missions;  they  were  epoch-making  for  the  lan- 
guages, creating  a  written  alphabet  and  a  national 
literature.  The  translations  of  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries  were  of  a  different  character; 
they  were  the  result  of  a  religious  reformation;  they 
represented  for  the  nation  the  culmination  point 
in  language  and  a  remarkable  stage  in  literature. 
Now  again  Christian  missions  revived,  and  started 
on  a  wonderful  career  all  over  the  world,  and  they 
needed  to  have  the  Bible  translated.  The  Bible 
societies  did  their  best  to  provide  as  many  transla- 
tions as  possible.  From  the  eight  languages  of 
600  A.  D.  and  some  twenty-four  in  the  sixteenth 
century  the  number  of  languages  into  which  the 
Bible  has  been  translated  has  grown  up  to  four 
hundred,  and  if  we  count  the  dialects  separately 
we  have  over  six  hundred.  The  whole  Bible  has 
not  been  translated  into  all  these  languages  and 
dialects,  but  in  every  case  parts  of  it,  sometimes 
the  New  Testament,  sometimes  only  one  Gospel, 
have  been  translated,  and  other  parts  will  fol- 
low. It  is  interesting  to  hear  the  translators 
speak  of  the  difficulties  they  have  to  overcome. 
One  sees  what  influence  the  Bible  has  on  civilisa- 
tion. Often  a  language  lacks  some  word  which 
is  indispensable  for  the  translator;  he  has  to  adapt 


MORE  BIBLE  TRANSLATIONS  169 

one  or  coin  a  new  one.  There  is  no  idea  more 
frequent  in  the  Bible  than  the  idea  of  God.  The 
Chinese  had  no  word  which  exactly  corresponded, 
the  usual  words  indicating  either  spirits  or  the  sun 
or  something  of  that  sort.  The  Amshara  lacks  the 
idea  of  righteousness,  the  Bantu  the  idea  of  holiness. 
If  the  translator  uses  as  an  equivalent  the  word  for 
separateness,  his  reader  will  get  rather  the  notion  of 
something  split.  Sometimes  the  translator  will  pre- 
fer to  keep  the  Greek  word,  as  in  the  case  of  baptise, 
but  he  must  be  careful,  for  batisa  in  Bantu  means 
"treat  some  one  badly."  So  the  language  has  to  be 
remodelled  in  order  to  become  suitable  for  the  pur- 
pose of  translating  the  Bible.  The  Bible  once  again 
exercises  a  civilising  influence  on  the  languages  of 
many  peoples.  With  very  few  exceptions,  such  as 
a  Malayan  Bible  of  1621  and  a  translation  by  John 
Eliot  into  the  Massachusetts  Indian  dialect  pub- 
lished in  1666,  most  of  these  translations  originated 
in  the  nineteenth  century  and  are  due  to  the  present 
missionary  energy  of  Christianity.  Here  again  it 
is  mortifying  to  see  how  the  Bible  is  spread  among 
peoples  who  never  had  had  civilisation  before,  while 
among  the  Christian  nations,  who,  to  a  large  ex- 
tent, owe  their  civilisation  to  this  very  Bible,  it  is 
disregarded. 
Besides  the  circulation  we  may  also  mention  the 


170  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

enormous  amount  of  mental  energy  spent  on  Bible 
studies  by  the  scholars  of  this  last  century.  Not 
only  students  of  theology  but  also  classical  and 
Oriental  scholars  have  joined  to  study  the  Bible,  to 
comment  upon  it,  and  make  everything  in  it  under- 
stood. Specialisation  in  its  inevitable  course  has 
caused  a  separation  of  Old  Testament  and  New  Tes- 
tament studies.  In  order  to  understand  and  explain 
thoroughly  the  Old  Testament  one  has  to  know 
several  Oriental  languages  and  follow  up  the  daily 
increasing  evidence  for  Oriental  history,  culture,  and 
religion,  whereas  the  New  Testament  scholar  is 
bound  to  study  the  development  of  the  Greek  lan- 
guage and  the  whole  civilisation  of  the  Hellenistic 
period.  Nay,  even  the  Old  and  the  New  Testa- 
ment departments  are  each  specialising  into  the 
textual  and  the  higher  criticism,  the  theology 
or  the  religious  history  both  of  the  Jewish  people 
and  of  primitive  Christianity.  One  scholar  studies 
the  life  of  Christ,  another  makes  the  apostolic  age 
the  topic  of  his  special  research;  one  is  commenting 
upon  the  Gospels,  another  upon  the  letters  of  Saint 
Paul.  The  literature  in  these  different  departments 
has  grown  so  rapidly  that  it  is  almost  impossible  to 
follow  it  and  to  survey  the  whole  field.  Never- 
theless, we  need  a  comprehensive  view,  and  a  large 
number  of  scientific  journals,  in  German,  English, 


RECENT  BIBLE  STUDIES  171 

French,  some  few  also  in  other  languages,  are  de- 
voted to  the  summing  up  of  results  which  have  been 
attained  by  special  research.  There  are  dozens  of 
dictionaries  and  encyclopedias  dealing  with  Biblical 
matters  either  separately  or  in  connection  with  other 
material.  It  is,  indeed,  wonderful  what  progress  has 
been  and  is  being  made.  One  is  astonished  to  find 
that  every  day  brings  new  problems  and  new  at- 
tempts at  solution,  and  one  cannot  help  admiring 
the  energy  and  sagacity  which  are  put  into  these 
studies. 

But  in  spite  of  this  circulation  never  attained  be- 
fore, and  in  spite  of  this  active  work  of  research, 
the  fact  remains  indisputable  that  the  Bible  has 
lost  its  former  position.  There  was  a  time,  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  when  the  Bible  was  at  least  one  foun- 
dation of  Christian  civilisation,  not  to  say  the  one 
foundation  (as  the  men  of  that  period  would  have 
said).  Then  there  was  a  time,  during  recent  cen- 
turies, when  the  Bible  ruled  daily  life  almost  com- 
pletely. Whether  we  regret  the  fact  or  approve  of 
it,  it  remains  a  fact,  and  we  have  to  face  it,  that 
those  times  are  gone. 

The  Bible  nowadays  is  one  book  among  a  thou- 
sand others.  It  is  still  revered  by  the  majority  of 
the  people,  but  it  is  not  so  much  read  as  it  was  in 
the  time  when  it  was  the  one  book  the  people  pos- 


172  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

sessed.  The  enormous  statistics  for  Bible  circula- 
tion lose  in  effect  if  we  compare  the  figures  of  the 
book-trade  in  general,  the  number  of  books  pub- 
lished every  year,  and  the  numbers  of  editions  and 
copies  which  some  of  the  notable  successes  have  at- 
tained. 

The  old  problem,  the  Bible  or  the  classics  or  a 
combination  of  both,  is  revived  in  a  new  form. 
There  is  a  neopaganism  in  literature,  and  often  it 
seems  incompatible  to  read  both  the  Bible  and 
modern  literature,  and  most  people  decide  in  favour 
of  the  latter.  Once  again  the  Bible  has  its  rivals 
very  numerous  and  strong. 

The  Bible  in  former  times  was  held  to  be  the 
divinely  inspired  text-book  for  all  human  knowledge. 
It  was  in  the  Bible  that  one  had  to  look  for  infor- 
mation not  only  about  God  and  God's  will  and 
everything  connected  with  God,  but  also  about  phi- 
losophy, natural  science,  history,  and  so  on.  Now  a 
secularisation  of  science  has  taken  place  by  which 
all  these  departments  of  human  knowledge  are  with- 
drawn from  the  ecclesiastical,  theological,  and  Bib- 
lical authority. 

The  mediaeval  view  of  the  world  as  taken  from 
the  Bible,  or  at  least  believed  to  be  taken  from  it, 
had  been  utterly  shattered  by  the  great  discoveries 
of  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries.  When  Co- 


NEW  DISCOVERIES  173 

lumbus  found  the  way  to  America  and  Vasco  da 
Gama  sailed  around  the  Cape  to  India,  and  later 
others  crossed  the  Pacific  Ocean,  the  earth  could  no 
longer  be  considered  as  a  round  plane,  it  was 
proved  to  be  a  globe.  Copernicus  deciphered  the 
mystery  of  heaven,  the  movement  of  the  earth 
around  the  sun;  Galileo  Galilei  followed  in  the  same 
studies,  and  Kepler  reached  the  climax  of  proba- 
bility for  the  new  theory.  The  church  did  not  follow 
at  once.  It  is  remarkable  that  Copernicus  did  not 
win  the  assent  of  Luther.  The  great  reformer,  crit- 
ical as  he  was,  felt  bound  in  this  question  to  the 
authority  of  the  Bible,  and  called  the  contradicting 
Copernicus  a  fool.  It  is  well  known  how  the  Roman 
church  by  its  inquisition  treated  Galileo  until  he 
withdrew  his  theory — formally,  still  holding  it  in 
his  heart  (e  pur  si  muove,  "and  yet  the  earth  does 
move").  Johannes  Kepler,  himself  a  Protestant 
and  brought  up  with  the  fullest  reverence  for  the 
Bible,  found  his  own  way  out  of  the  difficulty  by 
distinguishing  between  the  religious  and  the  scien- 
tific aspect  of  the  Bible,  an  anticipation  of  the  mod- 
ern solution.  And  if  one  is  willing  to  maintain 
the  modern  scientific  view  of  the  universe  as  it  has 
been  established  by  the  three  men  just  named,  and 
strengthened  by  their  followers,  he  must  renounce 
the  Bible  as  authority  in  matters  of  science.  It  is 


174  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

a  notable  fact  that  even  the  Roman  church,  in  1817, 
withdrew  the  verdict  against  Galileo's  theory  and 
similar  theses,  thereby  admitting  that  a  Christian 
may  safely  deny  the  Biblical  assumption  that  the  sun 
moves  round  the  earth. 

The  Bible  in  its  first  chapter  tells  us  that  the 
world  was  created  in  six  days;  geology  now  speaks 
of  twenty  million  years  and  more.  The  Bible  says 
that  man  was  created  on  the  sixth  day  by  a  special 
act  of  God;  Darwin's  theory  is  that  the  human 
race  is  the  result  of  an  evolution  which  eliminated 
numbers  of  former  beings  and  developed  ever  higher 
species.  The  Bible  tells  of  many  miracles  which 
can  have  no  other  meaning  than  that  in  certain 
cases  the  law  of  gravitation  and  other  laws  of 
nature  are  suspended;  the  scientist  tells  us  that  a 
law  loses  all  meaning  if  it  admits  of  exceptions.  Of 
course,  there  are  miracles  and  miracles:  the  healings 
of  Jesus  we  may  accept  as  historical  without  any 
hesitation,  but  the  standing  still  of  the  sun  in  Josh. 
10  :  12  is  nothing  but  a  poetical  form  of  speech,  and 
the  floating  axe-head  is  as  legendary  in  the  story  of 
Elisha  (II  Kings  6  :  6)  as  it  would  be  in  any  other 
legend. 

In  former  times  scholars  wrote  large  volumes  on 
the  animals  mentioned  in  the  Bible  and  the  flowers 
and  the  stones  and  so  on;  this  they  called  sacred 


MODERN  SCIENCE  AND  THE  BIBLE      175 

zoology  and  sacred  botany  and  sacred  mineralogy. 
It  was  not  for  their  amusement:  it  was  a  serious 
study.  The  Bible  was  thought  to  be  a  text-book 
for  every  science,  and  it  seemed  to  be  much  more 
valuable  to  get  information  of  all  kinds  from  the 
Bible  than  to  collect  real  animals,  flowers,  or  stones. 
Likewise  the  human  body  was  dealt  with  in  the  same 
scholastic  way;  it  is  a  comparatively  modern  thing 
for  physicians  to  be  allowed  to  study  the  body  and 
find  out  its  real  structure  by  dissection.  Now- 
adays it  is  universally  agreed  that  science  and  med- 
icine are  autonomous  and  are  not  dependent  on  the 
Bible. 

The  Bible  was  also  the  text-book  for  history,  as 
we  have  seen.  The  history  of  mankind,  according 
to  this  view,  was  limited  to  six  thousand  years.  A 
great  amount  of  mental  energy  was  spent  upon  the 
question  of  Biblical  chronology,  which,  however, 
proved  to  be  hopelessly  confused  by  the  fact  that 
various  systems  were  used  by  the  Biblical  authors 
themselves.  History  was  the  history  of  the  Jew- 
ish people,  enriched  by  some  glimpses  of  contem- 
poraneous pagan  history.  Now,  the  discoveries  in 
Egypt  and  Babylon  and  the  deciphering  of  the  Ori- 
ental inscriptions  have  illustrated  the  fact  that  the 
Jewish  people  was  only  one  among  others  and  one 
of  the  weakest  of  all  these  Oriental  nations.  Assyr- 


176  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

ian  kingdoms  were  established  as  early  as  6000  B.  c. 
The  famous  code  of  Hammurabi  is  much  older  than 
the  Mosaic  law.  If  we  compare  them,  we  find  that 
the  former  represents  a  high  level  of  civilisation, 
while  the  latter  establishes  rules  for  nomadic  life, 
a  relation  similar  to  that  which  exists  between 
the  Roman  law  and  the  national  laws  of  the  Ger- 
man tribes:  though  codified  later,  they  represent, 
nevertheless,  an  earlier  stage.  The  occupation 
of  Canaan  has  come  to  be  viewed  in  a  new  light 
through  the  exploration  of  Palestine.  The  his- 
tory of  the  kings  of  Judah  and  Israel  is  now  seen 
much  more  clearly  than  before  to  have  been  deter- 
mined by  politics;  they  are  for  ever  steering  between 
the  influence  of  Egypt  and  that  of  Babylon.  The 
accounts  given  in  the  Babylonian  archives  and  the 
Egyptian  inscriptions  are  to  be  compared  with  the 
Biblical  account,  and  some  may  feel  that  the  com- 
parison is  not  always  in  favour  of  the  latter.  Even 
the  social  and  religious  position  of  the  prophets  is 
nowadays  compared  with  contemporaneous  facts  in 
Greece,  Persia,  and  India.  The  life  of  Jesus  and  the 
Acts  of  the  Apostles  have  changed  their  aspect  with 
the  possibility  of  literary  comparison.  It  is  not  so 
much  the  literary  criticism  of  the  Gospels  and  the 
Acts  by  themselves  as  it  is  this  facility  of  compar- 
ison which  contributes  to  shake  the  authority 


A  NEW  HISTORICAL  HORIZON  177 

of  the  Bible.  We  find  the  same  miracles  told  of 
Jesus  and  of  the  emperor  Vespasian;  some  say- 
ings of  Jesus  can  be  compared  with  utterances  of 
Caesar  and  Pompey.  Many  of  his  words  have  paral- 
lels in  the  Jewish  literature  as  well  as  in  the  writings 
of  the  Stoa.  I  feel  sure  that  the  originality  of  Jesus 
will  but  gain  by  such  comparison,  but  it  is  obvious 
that  originality  must  be  taken  in  a  higher  sense 
than  is  often  the  case;  it  is  not  the  wording  but  the 
meaning  attached  to  it  which  is  new  and  original. 

In  this  way  everything  which  loomed  so  large 
when  viewed  standing  by  itself  in  the  Bible  has 
been  reduced  to  its  natural  size;  the  earth  has  lost 
its  central  position;  man  is  only  one  in  a  long  line 
of  similar  beings;  the  history  of  Israel  enters  the 
large  field  of  universal  history;  and  even  the  per- 
sonality of  Jesus  is  subject  to  comparison  and 
analogy. 

This  reduction  is  the  necessary  complement  of  the 
independence  and  autonomy  attained  for  human  sci- 
ence as  the  result  of  a  long  development.  Already 
in  the  sixteenth  century  the  humanists  claimed  for 
science  the  right  to  follow  its  own  rules  without 
being  led  and  limited  by  the  church's  authoritative 
doctrine.  They  aimed  at  a  civilisation  free  from 
ecclesiastical  tutelage;  going  back  to  the  classicism 
of  pre-Christian  times,  they  did  not  want  the  guard- 


178  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

ianship  of  the  Christian  church  and  its  clergy.  But 
the  time  was  not  yet  ripe  for  this  view.  Even  the 
reformers,  Luther  as  well  as  Calvin,  while  they 
broke  with  the  authority  of  mediaeval  scholasticism 
and  of  the  Roman  church,  were  not  prepared  to  ac- 
knowledge the  autonomy  of  science;  they  estab- 
lished the  primacy  of  the  Bible  in  an  even  stricter 
sense  than  it  had  borne  in  the  Middle  Ages.  The 
Bible  was  to  rule  everything,  and  it  was  the  Bible 
in  its  plain  and  simple  meaning,  without  the  mitiga- 
tions which  tradition  and  allegoiy  had  allowed  in 
former  times.  To  be  sure,  Luther  occasionally 
granted  some  independence  to  secular  science.  He 
was  furious  when  Aristotle  was  quoted  as  an  au- 
thority in  matters  of  religion,  but  would  himself 
introduce  him  as  an  authority  for  civil  government 
or  for  logic.  He  had  a  curious  proof  for  this  from 
the  Bible  itself.  It  was  on  the  advice  of  his  father- 
in-law,  Jethro,  a  pagan,  that  Moses  appointed  the 
seventy  elders  to  help  him  judge  the  people. 
Therefore  for  secular  organisation  one  may  take  the 
counsel  of  the  heathen,  of  the  philosophers.  But 
Luther  was  not  consistent;  as  we  have  already  seen, 
against  Copernicus  he  insisted  upon  the  authority 
of  the  Bible.  He  did  not  see  that  it  was  a  question 
of  astronomy  without  any  relation  to  religion.  In 
the  seventeenth  century  the  philosophers  began  to 


SLOW  PROGRESS  OF  SCIENCE  179 

claim  independence  for  the  human  reason,  and  soon 
they  established  reason  as  the  highest  authority, 
even  in  religious  matters.  It  is  very  interesting  to 
see  the  effect  of  this  claim  at  the  beginning.  Even 
the  most  advanced  liberals  were  so  convinced  of  the 
infallible  authority  of  the  Bible  that  they  tried  by 
all  means  at  their  disposal  to  reconcile  with  the  con- 
tents of  the  Bible  the  principles  which  the  rational 
philosophy  of  Descartes  or  Spinoza  had  established. 
They  started  a  new  method  of  interpretation  in  order 
to  make  the  Bible  agree  with  reason.  A  long  time 
had  to  pass  before  it  became  obvious  to  all  com- 
petent minds  that  the  Bible  and  reason  were  not 
to  be  reconciled  by  means  of  a  makeshift  harmony. 
It  was  only  in  the  nineteenth  century  that  the  view 
forced  itself  upon  all  scholars  that  the  Bible  has 
to  be  understood  in  an  historical  way;  that  it  does 
not  give  inspired  information  upon  natural  science 
and  history,  its  revelation  dealing  with  God  and 
religion  only. 

By  recent  discoveries  it  is  proved  that  the  crea- 
tion story  in  Gen.  1  is  by  no  means  a  unique  and 
original  one;  there  is  something  similar  in  the  Baby- 
lonian mythology;  it  may  have  been  taken  from 
there.  The  same  holds  true  regarding  the  story  of 
the  deluge  and  others.  So  there  is  no  reason  for 
claiming  for  these  stories  the  authority  of  revealed 


180  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

science;  the  Biblical  author  simply  shares  the  ideas 
of  his  time.  We  are  not  bound  to  the  scientific  no- 
tions of  a  period  two  thousand  years  before  Christ 
and  four  thousand  years  before  our  own  time.  And 
yet  there  is  something  unique  in  this  creation  story, 
as  told  in  Gen.  1,  for  which  one  looks  in  vain  in  all  the 
alleged  parallels  in  Babylonian  and  other  religions; 
it  is  the  idea  of  the  one  God  Almighty,  who  by  his 
supreme  will  creates  heaven  and  earth.  That  is  the 
revelation  conveyed  to  mankind  by  this  chapter. 
We  must  not  trouble  about  the  specific  descrip- 
tion of  creation;  that  belongs  to  the  historical 
form.  We  cling  with  all  our  heart  to  the  won- 
derful idea  of  the  one  creating  God,  and  we  realise 
that  here  revelation  is  given  to  us. 

It  is  only  by  comparison  that  the  real  importance 
of  a  thing  comes  out.  On  a  map  of  America,  made 
on  a  small  scale,  the  distances  may  seem  short; 
comparing  a  map  of  Europe  on  the  same  scale  one 
realises  how  long  they  are  in  fact.  We  are  always 
in  danger  of  taking  some  accidental  feature  for  the 
main  point.  The  frame  does  not  make  the  worth 
of  the  painting. 

As  the  Bible  has  lost  its  exclusive  authority  in 
the  domain  of  science,  so  in  the  fine  arts  it  has  ceased 
to  be  the  single  source  of  inspiration.  Since  the 
Renaissance  motifs  taken  from  ancient  mythology 


SECULARISATION  OF  ART  181 

and  poetry  have  come  into  competition  with  the 
Biblical  scenes;  the  Dutch  school  cultivated  the  il- 
lustration of  the  life  of  the  people  and  presented  even 
the  sacred  story  in  this  fashion — the  mystery  of 
sacredness  has  gone;  it  is  purely  human,  not  to  say 
profane.  The  French  liked  landscapes  and  used  Bib- 
lical subjects  only  as  accessories.  Pictures  of  bat- 
tles, triumphs,  apotheoses  filled  the  galleries.  Art 
to-day  is  anything  but  Biblical;  modern  painters 
have,  most  of  them,  no  sense  for  sacred  art.  I  ven- 
ture to  think  they  do  better  to  keep  away  from  it. 
For  if  a  modern  painter,  when  trying  to  illustrate 
the  parable  of  the  prodigal  son  in  a  triptychon,  puts 
in  the  large  middle  field  the  man  feeding  the  swine, 
giving  only  the  left-hand  corner  to  the  return  to 
the  father,  he  has  proved  himself  incapable  of  a 
religious  understanding  of  the  story,  however  fin- 
ished a  work  of  art  his  painting  may  be. 

By  all  this  process  of  secularisation  the  Bible  has 
been  drawn  back  from  general  civilisation  and  re- 
stricted to  its  own  proper  domain,  religion.  We  must 
not  insist  on  the  fact  that  even  here  the  Bible  seems 
to  have  lost  somewhat  of  its  infallible  authority. 
It  is  in  the  domain  of  theology  as  distinct  from  re- 
ligion that  this  holds  true.  Strange  as  it  may  seem, 
it  is  a  fact  that  the  Bible  is  no  more  the  text-book 
of  theology.  Theology,  of  course,  can  never  do 


182  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

without  the  Bible,  but  here  also  the  Bible  is  the 
source  of  historical  information,  not  the  authorita- 
tive proof  for  doctrine.  Already  in  the  period  when 
the  orthodox  Protestants  vied  with  one  another  in 
asserting  the  inspiration  of  the  Bible  in  the  boldest 
terms  and  relied  on  the  Bible  for  answers  to  every 
question,  Samuel  Werenfels  (d.  1740),  a  professor 
at  Basel,  wrote  the  distich: 

"  Hie  liber  est  in  quo  quserit  sua  dogmata  quisque, 
Invenit  et  pariter  dogmata  quisque  sua." 

"  This  is  the  book  where  each  man  seeketh  his  own 

ideas, 
In  it  accordingly  each  findeth  his  own  beliefs." 

It  was  the  support  given  by  the  Bible  to  every  doc- 
trine and  every  theory  which  made  critical  people 
doubt  the  propriety  of  proving  truth  by  adducing 
proof-texts;  and  this  not  only  for  dogmatical  ques- 
tions but  also  for  moral  ones.  It  is  well  known  how 
both  parties  in  the  controversy  over  slavery  appealed 
to  the  authority  of  the  Bible,  and  it  would  be  diffi- 
cult to  say  which  party  found  the  stronger  support 
in  the  letter  of  the  text.  The  same  holds  true 
regarding  other  questions  of  modern  life;  one 
can  argue  from  the  Bible  pro  and  con  regarding 
the  use  of  wine.  The  Bible  has  been  adduced  in 
the  question  of  polygamy.  It  can  be  quoted  on 


THE  BIBLE  PRO  AND  CON  183 

both  sides  with  reference  to  woman  suffrage.  It  is 
indicative  of  the  present  attitude  toward  the  Bible 
that  this  is  so  seldom  done.  The  use  of  the  Bible  for 
the  settling  of  modern  social  problems  has  brought 
upon  many  Christian  minds  a  pitiful  confusion. 
It  has  proved  impossible  to  deduce  from  the  Bible, 
even  from  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  rules  for  modern 
life.  Times  have  changed  and  the  conditions  of 
life  have  altered. 

All  this  prepared  the  way  for  the  historical  view 
of  the  Bible.  Then  the  period  of  higher  criticism 
began.  It  was  to  many  a  hard  lesson;  but  we  had 
to  learn  it.  It  was  started — curious  to  say — by 
Roman  Catholic  scholars  in  France.  Having  the 
authority  of  the  church  behind  them,  they  felt  more 
free  as  regards  the  Bible  than  the  Protestants  did. 
Richard  Simon  made  it  evident  that  the  transmis- 
sion of  the  Bible  excludes  a  mechanical  view  of  in- 
spiration. Astruc,  a  doctor,  the  physician  of  Louis 
XIV,  discovered  that  in  the  Pentateuch  two  differ- 
ent sources  were  used.  During  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury the  theories  of  literary  criticism  were  applied 
to  all  the  books  of  the  Old  and  the  New  Testament, 
and  the  scholarship  of  the  nineteenth  century  has 
taken  up  the  task,  perfected  the  method,  and  reached 
in  some  questions  a  general  agreement.  To-day 
the  principles  of  literary  criticism  in  their  appli- 


184  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

cation  to  the  Bible  are  generally  acknowledged. 
The  books  of  the  Bible  are  like  other  books;  they 
are  not  to  be  treated  as  divine  Scriptures  but  as 
human  writings.  One  has  to  inquire  in  each  in- 
stance about  the  author,  his  methods  of  writing, 
the  sources  of  his  information,  his  tendencies,  and 
so  on. 

Criticism  did  not  stop  here;  it  overstepped  the 
boundaries  of  purely  literary  criticism;  it  became 
historical  criticism,  too.  The  historicity  of  the  facts 
reported  in  the  Bible  was  called  in  question;  recently 
the  historicity  of  Jesus  has  been  denied ;  and  where 
his  existence  was  admitted,  still  his  teaching  was 
criticised.  Some  people  found  it  too  ascetic,  to 
others  it  was  purely  eschatological;  in  either  case  it 
could  not  be  adapted  to  our  own  time.  So  even  in  its 
central  points  the  Bible  seemed  to  be  attacked  and 
its  authority  shaken.  Instead  of  being  restricted  to 
the  domain  of  religion,  the  Bible  seemed  to  be  denied 
even  to  the  uses  of  devotion.  But  the  present 
situation  is  not  so  desperate  for  the  pious  Bible 
reader  as  it  looks. 

We  have  once  more  to  face  the  two  facts:  the 
circulation  of  the  Bible  has  grown  rapidly — im- 
mensely— and  the  estimation  of  the  Bible  has  been 
reduced  in  nearly  every  field.  Many  a  pious  Chris- 
tian, while  rejoicing  in  the  first  fact,  is  greatly  troub- 


PRESENT  DIFFICULTIES  185 

led  by  the  second.  Has  the  Bible  ceased  to  be  au- 
thoritative? Has  it  lost  its  infallibility?  If  the 
Bible  is  not  true  from  cover  to  cover,  then  it  seems 
to  be  not  trustworthy  at  all.  We  had  better  put  it 
aside  and  leave  it  to  deserved  oblivion.  That  is  an 
argument  frequently  brought  forward  nowadays, 
both  by  people  who  disbelieve  in  the  authority  of  the 
Bible  and  the  truth  of  the  Christian  religion  and 
by  those  who  eagerly  try  to  assert  the  old  authority 
of  the  Bible  as  the  inspired  Word  of  God  which  re- 
veals everything.  They  argue,  and  apparently  not 
without  plausibility,  that  if  you  destroy  the  au- 
thority of  the  Bible  at  any  point,  it  is  lost  altogether; 
there  is  no  limit  to  the  destructive  energy  of  our  time. 
Therefore  do  not  touch  this  question;  leave  the  Bible 
as  it  stands — the  sacred  book,  undisturbed  by  pro- 
fane hands.  It  is  the  book  by  which  our  fathers 
were  taught.  Why  should  we  disbelieve  in  it?  Both 
these  positions  seem  to  be  logically  consistent:  every- 
thing or  nothing;  infallible  or  no  authority.  But, 
in  fact,  the  truth  is  never  on  one  side.  Hard  as 
it  may  sound  to  our  philosophers,  the  truth  is 
very  seldom  logical.  What  seems  to  be  consis- 
tency is,  in  fact,  a  confusion  of  two  different  aspects 
which  ought  to  be  kept  separate.  The  Bible  is  not 
a  text-book  for  any  science — nay,  not  even  for  the 
science  of  theology.  It  is  the  book  for  Christian 


186  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

devotion.  This  was  its  original  intention,  and  I 
venture  to  think  that  it  is  not  a  loss  but  a  gain  if 
the  Bible  is  once  more  applied  to  its  proper  purpose. 

As  we  have  seen  in  the  first  chapter,  the  Bible 
proved  itself  to  be  an  inexhaustible  source  of  com- 
fort and  strength,  of  exhortation  and  inspiration  to 
the  Christians  of  the  first  period.  They  would  not 
leave  this  book  for  any  consideration — nay,  they 
would  even  die  for  it.  And  so  whenever  the  Bible 
was  read  by  a  pious  Christian  a  new  stream  of  life 
flowed  through  him  and  through  the  church.  And 
this  new  life  has  always  caused  a  strong  desire  for 
the  Bible.  There  is  a  reciprocal  influence  between 
Bible  and  piety;  the  Bible  creates  piety,  and  piety 
demands  the  Bible.  This  is  the  experience  of  nine- 
teen centuries;  it  is  impossible  that  the  twentieth 
century  should  alter  it.  As  long  as  a  pious  Christian 
lives  on  earth,  the  Bible  will  exercise  its  influence 
upon  him,  and  as  long  as  there  is  such  thing  as  the 
Bible  there  will  be  Christians.  That  is  sure!  It  is 
not  always  easy  to  measure  this  private  influence 
of  the  Bible  on  individual  piety  and  devotion. 
People  who  read  the  Bible  for  edification  usually  do 
not  talk  much  about  it.  In  biographies  it  is  not 
mentioned,  either  because  the  biographer  took  it  for 
granted  or  because  he  did  not  care  for  it  himself. 


INFLUENCE  ON  INDIVIDUALS  187 

Seldom  do  we  have  an  opportunity,  like  the  one 
given  in  Bismarck's  letters  to  his  wife,  where  he 
mentions  frequently  what  Psalm  or  passage  of  the 
Bible  he  read  before  going  to  bed  and  discusses  some 
points  which  have  struck  him.  It  is  impossible  to 
say  how  many  people  read  the  Bible  privately  for 
their  own  edification.  Seeing  how  few  know  the 
Bible  thoroughly,  we  might  suppose  that  very 
few  read  it,  but  it  is  said  that  Bible  reading  among 
the  boys  in  the  English  public  schools  is  again 
increasing.  And  I  feel  sure  that  the  time  must 
come,  and  will  come,  when  private  reading  of  the 
Bible  will  again  be  a  common  practice  among  Chris- 
tians. 

But  the  Bible's  task  is  not  only  to  sustain  indi- 
vidual piety;  it  has  a  second  duty  to  perform. 
Christianity  is  not  a  mere  aggregation  of  Christian 
individuals  but  a  community — a  church,  if  you 
will.  It  is  necessary  for  any  community  to  have 
a  standard,  for  any  church  to  have  a  creed.  It  is 
the  Bible  which  has  to  supply  this.  Herein  lies  the 
danger  of  aberration,  as  we  have  seen  in  the  second 
and  the  following  chapters.  The  history  of  the 
church  and  of  its  doctrine  gives  ample  proof  of  the 
fact  that,  taking  the  Bible  as  a  rule  for  the  church's 
dogma,  Christianity  not  only  missed  the  right  path 
for  the  development  of  doctrine,  but  even  lost  the 


188  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

right  use  of  the  Bible.  It  is  only  by  aiming  at  an 
historical  orientation  that  the  church  can  gain  from 
the  Bible  the  right  direction  for  the  setting  forth  of 
its  doctrine.  The  doctrine  of  the  church  never  can 
be,  and  never  has  been,  identical  with  the  doctrine 
of  the  Bible,  because  it  is  impossible  to  stop  the 
development  of  history;  besides,  there  are  as  many 
doctrines  in  the  Bible  itself  as  men  who  wrote  the 
several  books  of  the  Bible,  or  even  more.  Saint 
Paul  has  not  one  doctrine  of  the  atonement  but 
half  a  dozen  theories  about  it.  The  church  has 
to  formulate  its  own  doctrine  consistently  with  the 
Bible;  that  means  a  doctrine  which  keeps  to  the  main 
line  of  religious  development  as  testified  to  by  the 
Bible;  or,  rather,  to  do  justice  to  the  variety  of 
Biblical  doctrines,  permits  a  modern  adaptation  of 
the  several  modes  in  which  religious  experience  is 
expressed.  This  seems  vague,  but  it  is  the  path 
which  Christianity  is  bound  to  follow;  and  it  prom- 
ises success. 

The  modern  view  is  that  it  is  the  religious  ex- 
perience of  men,  as  testified  to  in  the  Bible,  from 
which  both  the  individual  and  the  church  take  their 
start.  But  Christians  believe  that  through  this  hu- 
man experience  God  himself  is  revealing  his  grace. 
Therefore  it  is  still,  as  our  fathers  said,  God's 
Word.  And  God  will  teach  the  church  to  formulate 


SIGNIFICANCE  FOR  THE  CHURCH        189 

the  common  experience  by  the  help  of  his  Word. 
That  is  the  present  position. 

But  now  what  of  the  influence  of  the  Bible  on 
civilisation?  Has  it  gone?  It  seems  under  present 
conditions  reduced  to  very  small  proportions,  if 
not  made  impossible  altogether.  I  am  prepared, 
however,  to  declare  that  just  the  opposite  is  true. 
The  influence  of  the  Bible  on  civilisation  still  con- 
tinues, and  it  will  grow  greater  the  more  the  Bible 
is  used  in  the  proper  way,  as  an  influence  not  on 
outward  form  but  in  inward  inspiration. 

The  results  of  the  influence  exerted  by  the  Bible 
in  former  centuries,  when  it  was  an  outward  rule  of 
life,  still  go  on.  We  cannot  imagine  what  would 
have  become  of  mankind  if  there  had  been  no  Bible. 
We  cannot  drop  the  previous  history  out  of  our  life. 
We  still  speak  the  language  which  was  modelled  by 
our  Bible;  we  still  quote  many  proverbs  which  orig- 
inate in  the  Bible,  even  without  knowing  that  they 
come  from  the  Bible.  Our  artists  will  go  on  choos- 
ing motifs  from  the  Bible.  The  civilised  nations 
will  never  give  up  Sunday,  although  not  keeping  it 
as  a  Sabbath.  They  will  continue  to  aim  at  a  fuller 
measure  of  legal  and  social  equality,  convinced  as 
many  may  be  that  it  is  impossible  to  create  an  out- 
ward equality  among  men  as  long  as  there  is  no 


190  THE  BIBLE  AND  CIVILISATION 

equal  sense  of  responsibility  and  duty  in  all  mem- 
bers of  the  nation. 

The  influence  of  the  Bible  in  its  present  position 
as  the  book  of  devotion  is  of  supreme  impor- 
tance for  civilisation.  Progress  in  civilisation  is 
guaranteed  not  by  constitution  nor  by  law  but  only 
by  the  spirit  which  rules  the  individual  and  through 
the  individual  the  community.  We  need  strong 
characters  who  know  the  great  truth  of  self-sacrifice. 
Such  characters  are  formed  by  the  inward  inspira- 
tion given  by  devotional  reading  of  the  Bible. 
Making  men  devout,  it  makes  them  strong  and  in- 
fluential in  the  common  effort  to  promote  civilisa- 
tion by  removing  everything  which  is  contrary  to 
the  welfare  of  others.  That  is  the  most  important 
influence  which  the  Bible  can  have;  and  that  in- 
fluence it  still  exerts  and  ever  will  exert  on  civi- 
lisation. 


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